Why Wolves are responsible for the Champions League

Wolverhampton Wanderers are the talk of the Premier League with their army of high-class Portuguese imports, several of whom have played in the Champions League.

But did you know that Wolves played more part than any other club in creating the Champions League?

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Back in the 1950s, before European football had really expanded beyond domestic boundaries, Wolves were one of the top teams in England, winning three league titles as well as FA Cup titles in 1949 and 1960.

During this decade the Black Country club took advantage of the FA relaxing its rules around the installation of floodlights, and decided to test themselves against some of the continent’s best team in a series of ‘floodlight friendlies’.

Perhaps the most famous of these matches was against Hungarian giants Honved in 1954. Honved’s biggest star was football legend Ferenc Puskas, captain of Hungary’s Mighty Magyars who had famously beaten England 6-3 in the ‘Match of the Century’ at Wembley in 1953. England centre back that day was Wolves captain Billy Wright.

Playing under the flash new floodlights, Wolves’ 3-2 win captivated Europe and the country as the BBC broadcast the match live.

It was Wolves’ second ‘floodlight friendly’ win, having already beaten Spartak Moscow earlier in the year, prompting many in England to call them the ‘champions of the world’.

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Watching the match at Molineaux was L’Equipe editor Gabriel Hanon who felt Wolves couldn’t be called champions until they had beaten Spartak or Honved in Moscow and Budapest respectively. That was when Hanon started to campaign for a competition where Europe’s top clubs would face off regularly.

Thus the European Cup kicked off in time for the 1955-56 season.

It has been more than 60 years since those early European football nights under floodlights but Wolves were instrumental in getting the Champions League as we know it now up and running.

Just think, we could never have seen that volley from Zinedine Zidane, never have seen Lionel Messi leaving Jerome Boateng in a babbling wreck on the floor, Gareth Bale wouldn’t have scored his bicycle kick in the final and Arsenal would have avoided getting hammered in the Last 16 every year.

Wolves did miss out on the earliest editions of the European Cup but did beat reigning champions Real Madrid 5-4 on home and away friendlies in 1957.

They did eventually feature in the European Cup and reached the quarter finals in 1960 where they were knocked out by Barcelona.