ehf_25yers_book_webversion

fers around the playing court, at the large
crowds in the stands and at the dedication
and enthusiasm with which the athletes
work throughout the season to get to the
place of their desires, can hardly image
how modest and complex the beginnings
of the European Cup were; how hard and
rocky the road was that led to this pinnacle
event and that started with the first official
game in Skopje on 25 August 1993,
at 8.15 p.m., under the auspices of a still
young European Handball Federation. In
the elimination round of the Women’s
Champions Cup, the first whistle was
blown by the referee almost “in private“.
The match was played by the Macedonian
club RK Djorce Petrov Skopje versus the
Bulgarian club Lokosport Plovdiv (34-17).
The referees Klucso/Lekrinszki were from
Hungary.
That this dynamic development has
been anything but unremarkable is underlined
by the history of club competitions
in the era before the EHF’s foundation in
1991. The idea of staging such a tournament
had already been voiced in 1937,
when handball magazines in Austria and
Germany called for a “Mitropa Cup for
handball” modelled on the then popular
precursor of the football European Cup.
“What about a Central European cup
for club teams?” – This was the question
raised by Deutsche Handball-Zeitung
when asked what their wishes were for the
year of 1952.
When UEFA, the Union of European
Football Associations, launched their
European Cup in 1955, handball soon
followed suit – both competitions were
the result of an initiative started by the
French sports magazine L’Equipe. The European
Cup of National Champions, as it
was called then, was indeed quite popular
at a number of venues. It was obvious,
however, that the International Handball
Federation (IHF) had problems with the
long-term marketing of the competition
to potential sponsors or TV partners and
with raising its popularity continuously in
countries outside Germany. “One should
not overestimate the volume of revenues
that can be generated by European Cup
games,” said IHF Director Friedhelm Peppmeier
in 1983. “If you don’t have German
contenders in the finals, revenues will
go down to zero due to a lack of interest in
other countries.”
After the EHF had been founded in November
1991, it soon became clear that
the European Cup would also be organised
under the auspices of the new umbrella
organisation. The global IHF had lost any
interest in club competitions, as IHF Manag-
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