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The UEFA Champions League was born in April, sixty-five years ago. CL became the most prestigious club competition not only in Europe but also in the world. 

UEFA Club Rankings All Time

Introduced in 1955 as the European Champion Clubs' Cup, the competition was initially a knockout tournament accessible only to the country champions.

Hanot's idea convinced UEFA and it 'escalated' with the first edition of European cup in 1995/96 season.

Therefore, leaders of the top 18 European clubs met in France to discuss creating a European Champions Cup. UEFA was convinced by Hanot's idea and it 'escalated' with the first edition of European cup in 1955/56 season.

Sporting CP and Partizan were the teams to open the ceremony of the newly created format. At the same time, first Cup winners were Real Madrid who came back from behind to win 4-3 over Stade de Reims. 

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Capítulo 14 - 1955/56 (IV): el 13 de junio de 1956, el #realmadrid se proclama campeón de la primera edición de la Copa de Europa de clubes. FOTO: primer partido del #realmadrid en la historia de la Copa de Europa. Alineación de izquierda a derecha: Alonso, Navarro, Oliva, Lesmes, Mu?oz y Zárraga. Agachados: #luismolowny , Pérez Payá, Di Stéfano, Rial y Gento.

A post shared by Luis Molowny (@lmolowny) on Oct 25, 2018 at 10:20am PDT

Another tournament is manifested in the same year- called Inter-Cities Fairs Cup - who became an annual competition. However, it wasn't recognised by UEFA until 1963. 

But during the years several changes happened. In 1971/72 season the Fairs Cup was replaced by the name UEFA Cup and. It was finally reformatted in 2009 as the Europa League. In comparison, the most prestigious competition European Cup became the Champions League in 1992. 

So the question arises, can the previous format of the European Cup be equivalent to the current Champions League level? Well, many are saying that the European Cup was easier to win, and there is a fact approving this statement. 

For example, Liverpool had only seven games on their road of European Cup winners in 1977/78, while they played 13 matches to lift the Champions League trophy in the 2018/2019 campaign. 

Still, qualifying for the European Cup was harder since only the national league's champions could compete.

Having this in mind, take in count Barcelona's number of four campaigns in the European Cup before they won the title in 1992.



Looking at the other cups - the Fairs Cup, Uefa Cup, Cup Winners' Cup, and Europe League - all of them are equal in status. So, with the scoring system designed to generate a European elite table, we can have a fair way of calculating the all-time top clubs on the old continent.

Usually, Champions League (European Cup) has since ever been the highest-ranked competition, and therefore we have the next points system: 

Winners: 12 points - Runners-up: 6 points  - Beaten semi-finalist: 3 points. 

The other cups mentioned above and the occasionally played Super Cup are rated in the following way:

Winners: 8 points - Runners-up: 4 points  - Beaten semi-finalist: 2 points 

UEFA club rankings all time

The top 40

Rank	Team	Points
1	Real Madrid	243
2	Barcelona	186
3	Bayern Munich	146
4	AC Milan	143
5	Liverpool	138
6	Juventus	129
7	Ajax	98
8	Inter Milan	97
9	Manchester United	90
10	Atletico Madrid	80
11	Benfica	75
12	Chelsea	72
13	Valencia	56
14	Anderlecht	51
15	Porto	48
16	Hamburg	43
17	Arsenal	43
18	Dortmund	42
19	Sevilla	41
20	Tottenham	41
21	Leeds United	40
22	Borussia Monchengladbach	37
23	Feyenoord	37
24	Marseille	35
25	Celtic	32
26	Parma	31
27	PSV Eindhoven	30
28	Rangers	28
29	Dynamo Kiev	28
30	Fiorentina	28
31	Nottingham Forest	27
32	Crvena Zvezda	27
33	AS Roma	25
34	Steaua Bucharest	24
35	Real Zaragoza	24
36	Monaco	23
37	IFK Gothenburg	22
38	Sampdoria	20
39	Eintracht Frankfurt	20
40	Ferencvaros	20

You can also take a look at all 22 Champions League winners list