Copy linkFacebookXPinterestEmailShare this article 0Join the conversationFollow usAdd us as a preferred source on GoogleNewsletterSubscribe to our newsletterFootball used to be a simple game.Win the league? Well done, youve qualified for the European Cup. Finish among the best of the rest? Into the UEFA Cup you go. Win your domestic cup? Congratulations, youre off to the Cup Winners Cup.Everyone knew where they stood.UEFA mathsToday, European football requires a flowchart, a calculator and a working knowledge of UEFA coefficients to understand exactly what is going on.The Champions League now has 36 teams playing in one enormous league table. The Europa League does likewise. You may like These World Cup 2026 trends MUST continue this season Incredible penalty shootout rule tweak that could change knockout football The Community Shield must mark the end of The FAs Wembley obsession And sorry Crystal Palace fans, but the Conference League is the continental equivalent of the Papa Johns Trophy (or whatever its called this week).Its a competition with zero cachet. Its also the byproduct of the over-complication of European football.Get FourFourTwo NewsletterThe best features, fun and footballing quizzes, straight to your inbox every week.Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.It just shoves in more teams into ever-more-complicated formats, creating yet more games.What European football could really do with is something wonderfully simple.Yes, its time to bring back the Cup Winners Cup. What to read next PSR wasn't perfect, but SCR is a dangerous step in the wrong direction that could destroy the Premier League's unique selling point UEFA arent the good guys in FIFAs failed World Cup sell-off as locked-away blueprint proves Scottish football needs Edinburgh to stand up and last season proved it The clue was always in the name. Win your country's domestic cup, and you qualified for a European competition populated by other teams who had done exactly the same thing.First held in 1960/61, the Cup Winners Cup went on to provide some of European footballs most iconic moments.Nayim from the halfway line. Ronaldo powering Barcelona to victory under Bobby Robson. Alex Fergusons Aberdeen defeating Real Madrid in the final.But the real beauty of the competition wasn't found only in its finals or its famous winners it was in the very makeup of the tournament.There was none of this league-phase nonsense. No finishing 23rd and still having a chance of lifting the trophy. It was straight knockout football from the get-go, with ties played over two legs.And there was jeopardy at every turn.Modern European football has become obsessed with guaranteeing its biggest clubs more matches. The Cup Winners Cup guaranteed you nothing.Draw a giant in the first round and your European adventure could be finished by October.Where else would you see Shamrock Rovers take on Bayern Munich? The two met in 1966/67 and the eventual champions required a late Gerd Mller goal to squeeze through 4-3 on aggregate.Or how about Merthyr Tydfil against Atalanta? The Welsh minnows stunned their Serie A opponents by winning the first leg before eventually going out in Italy.Then there was Bangor City against Atltico Madrid, another pairing that looked as though somebody had picked two teams from opposite ends of a European football atlas.That unpredictability wasn't restricted to individual ties, either.The Cup Winners Cup captured teams at particular moments in their history. Sometimes it provided a glimpse of what was coming next.Manchester United won it in 1991, shortly before Alex Ferguson's side began their era of domestic dominance.Sampdoria lifted it in 1990, won Serie A the following year and reached the European Cup final in 1992.The final edition was won by Lazio in 1999. Twelve months later, they were champions of Italy.It was often a trophy for teams on the rise. And because qualification depended on winning a cup rather than finishing in roughly the same league positions every season, the cast constantly changed.Real Madrid never won it, despite reaching two finals. Dinamo Tbilisi won it. So did Slovan Bratislava. And KV Mechelen. Even Spurs won it.That isn't to suggest it was some sort of European competition for minnows.Barcelona lifted the trophy four times. Ajax, Arsenal, Milan and Anderlecht all won it. Bayern Munich and Manchester United did too.That was precisely what made it so appealing.One season you could have Barcelona and Bayern Munich. The next you might have Carl Zeiss Jena (finalists in 1981), Antwerp (1993 runners-up) or FC Magdeburg (winners in 1974).Domestic cups provided different qualifiers every year and therefore European football got different stories.Another consequence was that nobody ever retained the Cup Winners Cup. Across almost four decades of competition, not one defending champion came back and won it again the following year.Eventually, however, the Cup Winners Cup became a victim of European football's changing landscape.The Champions League expanded and qualification became increasingly complicated. Domestic cup winners were often also qualifying for UEFA's premier competition through their league position.By 1999, the Cup Winners Cup was gone, but at least it received a fitting send-off.A Lazio side containing Alessandro Nesta, Pavel Nedvd, Christian Vieri and Roberto Mancini defeated Mallorca 2-1 at Villa Park.It has been consigned to history ever since. But 27 years on from its demise, perhaps European football needs the Cup Winners Cup more than ever.If you've been paying attention to any of this, you'll know the answer to whether it should return.Yes. Yes, it should.Bring back a competition for Europe's domestic cup winners. Straight knockout football, home and away, populated entirely by teams who actually won something to get there.And while we're at it, give the winners of the Carabao Cup a route into it too.Suddenly, a domestic trophy that now sits only just above the Community Shield in terms of prestige comes with the promise of a proper European adventure.No endless league phase. No competition that seemingly starts the second the previous season ends. Cup winners playing cup winners in every single tie.Its time to restore some semblance of order to the European footballing calendar.Lets get the Cup Winners Cup back and then we can have a serious conversation about the Anglo-Italian Cup.TOPICSChelseaLazioCrystal PalaceReal MadridAberdeenShamrock RoversBayern MunichAtltico MadridBangor CitySampdoriaDinamo TbilisiSlovan BratislavaTottenham HotspurBarcelonaAjaxArsenalRich ChamberlainSocial Links NavigationRichard is a freelance writer with 20 years of experience in writing about football and music. Its a career that has seen him interview everyone from Jimmy Hill to Ice-T (on separate occasions, obviously). He has had several books published, including When The Sky Was Blue (about his beloved Coventry Citys Premier League days) and Euro 96: The Full Story.
