UEFA


The Union of European Football Associations is the administrative body for association football, futsal and beach soccer in Europe, although several member states are primarily or entirely located in Asia. It is one of six continental confederations of world football's governing body FIFA. UEFA consists of 55 national association members.
UEFA represents the national football associations of Europe, runs nation and club competitions including the UEFA European Championship, UEFA Nations League, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, and UEFA Super Cup, and controls the prize money, regulations, and media rights to those competitions.
Henri Delaunay was the first general secretary and Ebbe Schwartz the first president. The current president is Aleksander Čeferin, a former Football Association of Slovenia president, who was elected as UEFA's seventh president at the 12th Extraordinary UEFA Congress in Athens in September 2016, and automatically became a vice-president of the world body FIFA.

History and membership

UEFA was founded on 15 June 1954 in Basel, Switzerland after consultation between the Italian, French, and Belgian associations. At the founding meeting, 25 members were present. However, 6 other associations which were not present were still recognised as founding members, bringing the total of founding associations to 31. That number doubled by the early 1990s as new associations were born out of the fragmentation of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia into their constituent states. Until 1959 the main headquarters were located in Paris, and later in Bern. In 1995, UEFA headquarters were transferred to Nyon, Switzerland.
UEFA membership coincides for the most part with recognition as a sovereign country in Europe, although there are some exceptions. One UN member state and one UN observer state are not members. Some UEFA members are not sovereign states, but form part of a larger recognised sovereign state in the context of international law. These include Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales, Gibraltar, the Faroe Islands, and Kosovo, however in the context of these countries government functions concerning sport tend to be carried at the territorial level coterminous with the UEFA member entity.
Some UEFA members are transcontinental states and others are considered part of Europe both culturally and politically. Countries which had been members of the Asian Football Confederation were also admitted to the European football association, particularly Israel and Kazakhstan. Additionally some UEFA member associations allow teams from outside their association's main territory to take part in their "domestic" competition. AS Monaco, for example, takes part in the French League ; Welsh clubs Cardiff City, Swansea City and Newport County A.F.C. participate in the English League; Derry City, situated in Northern Ireland, plays in the Republic of Ireland-based League of Ireland and the 7 native Liechtenstein teams play in the Swiss Leagues, as Liechtenstein has no own league and only a cup competition.

Members

;Notes

Former members

There are several national teams within Europe that are not members of UEFA. Many of them are instead affiliated with CONIFA.

UEFA competitions

National teams:
Clubs:
Defunct
Intercontinental:
Defunct
Amateur:
Defunct
UEFA runs official international competitions in Europe and some countries of Northern, Southwestern and Central Asia for national teams and professional clubs, known as UEFA competitions, some of which are regarded as the world's most prestigious tournaments.

International

UEFA is the organiser of two of the most prestigious competitions in international football: The UEFA European Championship and the UEFA Nations League. The main competition for men's national teams is the UEFA European Championship, started in 1958, with the first finals in 1960, and known as the European Nations Cup until 1964. The UEFA Nations League is the second tournament of UEFA and was introduced in 2018. The tournament largely replaced the international friendly matches previously played on the FIFA International Match Calendar. It will be played every two years.
UEFA also runs national competitions at Under-21, Under-19 and Under-17 levels. For women's national teams, UEFA operates the UEFA Women's Championship for senior national sides as well as Women's Under-19 and Women's Under-17 Championships.
UEFA also organised the UEFA–CAF Meridian Cup with CAF for youth teams in an effort to boost youth football. UEFA launched the UEFA Regions' Cup, for semi-professional teams representing their local region, in 1999. In futsal there is the UEFA Futsal Championship and UEFA Under-19 Futsal Championship. Despite the existence of UEFA's Futsal and Beach soccer committee, UEFA does not organise any beach soccer competitions. International and club beach soccer competitions for UEFA members are organised externally by Beach Soccer Worldwide.
The Italian, German, Spanish, French and Russian men's national teams are the sole teams to have won the European football championship in all categories.

Club

The top-ranked UEFA competition is the UEFA Champions League, which started in the 1992/93 season and gathers the top 1–4 teams of each country's league ; this competition was re-structured from a previous one that only gathered the top team of each country.
A second, lower-ranked competition is the UEFA Europa League. This competition, for national knockout cup winners and high-placed league teams, was launched by UEFA in 1971 as a successor of both the former UEFA Cup and the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. A third competition, the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, which had started in 1960, was absorbed into the UEFA Cup in 1999.
In December 2018, UEFA announced the creation of a third club competition, with a working title of Europa League 2 . The competition would feature 32 teams directly in 8 groups of 4, with a knockout round between the second placed teams in UEFA Europa Conference League and the third placed teams in the Europa League, leading to a final 16 knockout stage featuring the eight group winners. UEFA announced that the first edition of the competition begins in 2021.
In women's football UEFA also conducts the UEFA Women's Champions League for club teams. The competition was first held in 2001, and known as the UEFA Women's Cup until 2009.
The UEFA Super Cup pits the winners of the Champions League against the winners of the Europa League, and came into being in 1973.
The UEFA Intertoto Cup was a summer competition, previously operated by several Central European football associations, which was relaunched and recognised as official UEFA club competition by UEFA in 1995. The last Intertoto Cup took place in 2008.
The European/South American Cup was jointly organised with CONMEBOL between the Champions League and the Copa Libertadores winners.
Only five teams have won each of the three main competitions, a feat that is no longer possible for any team that did not win the Cup Winners' Cup. There are currently eight teams throughout Europe that have won two of the three trophies; all but one have won the Cup Winners' Cup, four require a win in the Champions League and four require a UEFA Europa League win.
Juventus of Italy was the first team in Europe—remaining the only one to date —to win all UEFA's official championships and cups and, in commemoration of achieving that feat, have received The UEFA Plaque by the Union of European Football Associations on 12 July 1988.
UEFA's premier futsal competition is the UEFA Futsal Cup, a tournament started in 2001 which replaced the former Futsal European Clubs Championship. This event, despite enjoying a long and well-established tradition in the European futsal community, dating back to 1984, was never recognised as official by UEFA.

Current title holders

Titles by nation

Sponsors

;UEFA national team competitions:
;UEFA Champions League:
;UEFA Europa League:
Highest Ranked UEFA member
in the men's FIFA World Rankings

Legend
For each tournament, the flag of the host country and the number of teams in each finals tournament are shown.

FIFA World Cup

Notes

FIFA Women's World Cup

Olympic Games For Men

Olympic Games For Women

Sanctions

Against associations

Dissatisfied fans across Europe have referred to the organisation as UEFA mafia, including in Russia's top league, in Bulgaria's top league, and in a Champions League group stage match held in Sweden. The term has also been covered for its use outside of stadiums, for example during a protest in Kosovo outside an EU building following the Serbia v Albania match.
Following the 2015 FIFA corruption case, the current president of UEFA, Michel Platini, was also involved himself in the case. Swiss prosecutors accuse FIFA president Sepp Blatter of making a "disloyal payment" of $2m to Mr Platini. Swiss attorney general, Michael Lauber, stated: "We didn't interview Mr Platini as a witness, that's not true. We investigated against him in between as a witness and an accused person". Both Platini and Sepp Blatter are currently under formal investigation by FIFA's independent ethics committee. On 8 October 2015, Platini was provisionally suspended for 90 days from any football-related activity.
In 2019 UEFA's decision to host Europa League Cup final in Baku, Azerbaijan left one of the finalists, Arsenal, with a decision to withdraw their Armenian player Henrikh Mkhitaryan out of the competition due to safety concerns.

Executive Committee

President
Vice-presidents
Members
General secretary
Deputy general secretary
Treasurer
Head of club competitions
Head of national competitions
Awards:
Qualifications:
Match: