ehf_25yers_book_webversion

Before the EHF staged the first draw for
European Cup matches on 10 August
1993, the EHF Congress 1993 held in
Antwerp had taken the first fundamental
decisions regulating club competitions.
The IHF Cup played since 1981 was renamed
EHF Cup from the 1993-94 season
onwards. In order to resolve potential calendar
problems, the EHF created the “City
Cup” (for teams placed third in national
leagues) as a fourth club competition beside
the Cupwinners’ European Cup and
the competition of national champions –
previously, many major leagues, among
them most prominently Germany’s Bundesliga,
had asked for additional places
in the European Cup. The European Cup
of National Champions was likewise restructured
and renamed: starting from
the group phase of the year 1993-94,
the competition, played by a total of eight
teams in two groups of four, was henceforth
called the “Champions League”.
risk exposing spectators and players to
bombing or shelling.” It took many years
for the conflicts in the territory of former
Yugoslavia to be finally resolved politically
and peace to be restored in a way that
made it possible to come to sensible arrangements
also where sports were concerned.
Unrestricted drawing had always
been one of the key elements of EHF competitions,
but resulted in numerous “problem
matches”, some of which had to be
played on neutral ground.
The legacy that the EHF had accepted
by taking over the European Cup competitions
from the International Handball
Federation was also challenging and complex
in many respects. Up until that date,
marketing activities had hardly been undertaken.
The EHF also had to start from
scratch again organisationally, as the political
and geographical changes in the East
of Europe had resulted in a new political
landscape. And then there were the warlike
events in the Balkans. The European
Cup had been smashed to pieces, not
only metaphorically speaking. It is also
all the more remarkable that the club
competition have evolved into beacon
events such as the VELUX EHF FINAL4 in
Cologne and the Women’s EHF FINAL4 in
Budapest.
Naturally, with the creation of their
Champions League, the EHF did model
some elements from big brother football,
but in one specific point, the handballers
were way ahead of the footballers: from the
very beginning, there was an equal Women’s
Champions League. The first playing
system, which has until today been constantly
updated and necessarily modified,
saw 32 national champions play in two KO
rounds, before eight teams would move on
to the Group Phase playing a round-robin
system against each other in both men’s
and women’s competitions. Previously,
there were only knock-out rounds. The
winner of the Group Phase then made it
to the final. In the men’s competition, the
first finalists were Teka Santander (Spain)
and ABC Braga (Portugal). In the women’s
competition, it was a repeat of the National
Champions finals with HYPO Niederösterreich
playing against Vasas Budapest.
In the first year in particular, the EHF, of
course, had to overcome major start-up
problems. As the administrative system
was not up and running yet, the Federation
refrained from sending delegates in
the inaugural season. Moreover, the Office
in Vienna was facing substantial technical
problems in issuing players’ passports as
there were quite a few cases in which the
nationalities of the successor states of the
133