A London club has never won the Champions League but, when the English capital became the first European city to boast three sides in the group stage of the competition this season, the likelihood of its long wait to win the competition ending at last looked to be greater than ever. When Arsenal, Chelsea, and Spurs all succeeded in reaching the knockout stages, the odds on the final at Wembley witnessing a win for a London team shortened again – at least until Arsenal and Spurs drew Barcelona and Milan, respectively, in the last sixteen.
In the end, Spurs excelled themselves against the Serie A leaders but Arsenal were narrowly defeated 4-3 on aggregate by their Spanish spiritual cousins, though they were comprehensively outplayed in the away leg. Chelsea, for their part, eased past FC Copenhagen. With the draw for the last eight and the semi-finals of the Champions League to take place on Friday, the two remaining London sides from the west and north of the city are both still in the running to do what the other English club joining them in the quarter-finals – Manchester United, who knocked out Marseille – achieved in 1968: lift the trophy on home soil.
The last time a team won the Champions League in its own country was in 1997 when Germany’s Borussia Dortmund defeated Juventus 3-1 in Munich. That result came only a year after the Italian club had beaten Ajax on penalties in the final in Rome. The other clubs to have benefited from home advantage all won the tournament when it was still trading as the European Cup: Liverpool (1978 – against FC Brugge at Wembley), Ajax (1972 – against Inter Milan in Rotterdam), Manchester United (1968 – against Benfica at Wembley), Inter Milan (1965 – also against Benfica, in Milan), and Real Madrid (1957 – against Fiorentina in Madrid). The 1957 final at the Santiago Bernabéu stadium and the 1965 final at the San Siro, then, are also the only two that have been won by sides playing in their actual home stadium.
Roma could have followed suit in 1984 but, with a little help from goalkeeper Bruce Grobbelaar’s ‘spaghetti legs,’ Liverpool triumphed in the penalty shootout at the Giallorossi’s Stadio Olimpico to win their fourth European Cup. The last time the final featured a side from the host country that then went on to lose on the night was in 1986 when Barcelona lost a dour game against Steaua Bucharest in Seville, again on penalties. Reims, who lost the first ever European Cup final to Real Madrid in Paris in 1956, are the only other side to have lost within their native borders.
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Should either Chelsea or Spurs make it to Wembley on 28th May, then, it will be only the third time a London side has reached the Champions League final. Arsenal lost to Barcelona in Paris in 2006 while, two years later, Chelsea came within the width of a post of beating Manchester United in Moscow. The 2008 final – John Terry’s scuffed penalty and all – summed up the north-west of England’s pre-eminence over the capital in Europe’s top club competition. Not only have Liverpool and Manchester United lifted the cup at Wembley before, the two clubs have triumphed eight times between them in total.
Aside from the 1968 and 1978 finals featuring United and Liverpool that Wembley played host to, the old stadium staged the showpiece fixture of the European season on three other occasions before it was marked for demolition in 2000: in 1963, Milan beat Benfica 2-1 to deprive the Portuguese side a hat-trick of final wins; Ajax won the first of three successive European Cups in 1971 against Panathinaikos; and Barcelona won the trophy for the first time in 1992 thanks to a Ronald Koeman free-kick against Sampdoria. Aside from Liverpool’s win in 1978, then, the old Wembley only ever welcomed first-time winners. Indeed, of the nine different clubs to have been Wembley finalists, Liverpool and Benfica were the only two that had won the competition prior to the year they lined up in London – and Benfica lost on both their visits. If the new stadium is to maintain that quirk of history it could count in Spurs and Chelsea’s favour but, then again, Schalke or Shakhtar Donetsk’s too.
Berlin, Paris, and Rome are three other members of the luckless capital city club, in that none of their sides have won the Champions League either. The German and French cities have never even had a finalist, and it is one of the interesting aspects of the European club game that sides from those two capital cities have been continuously outshone on the football field by their provincial rivals. London will be playing catch-up with the north-west clubs’ European trophy haul for a long time yet, even if Chelsea or Spurs do manage to avoid Barcelona in Friday’s draw and then progress to and win the final. Nonetheless, Wembley success for Harry or Carlo in two months’ time would be a truly historic event.
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