For a competition so intertwined with the midweek, the opening match of the European Cup took place on a windy Sunday evening in September. At the beautifully manicured Estádio Nacional in Lisbon, Sporting Clube de Portugal and Fudbalski klub Partizan met. Symbolically, Portugal was ruled by António de Oliveira Salazar a dictator on the right of the political spectrum and Yugoslavia Josip Broz Tito a dictator on the left. Whilst Stalin’s death had led to the beginning of a thaw in political tensions, the Cold War was very much at its peak and this tie and future fixtures would illustrate the political balancing act UEFA had to straddle.

14 minutes into the match João Martins, a cork-stripper from Alentejo in Southern Portugal, was released in behind the Partizan defence and rifled the ball past the Yugoslav goalkeeper Slavko Stojanović. He put the home side ahead and himself in the history books. Partizan responded with two goals from Miloš Milutinović, later to play for Bayern Munich and brother of serial International manager Bora. Sporting restored parity through 19 year-old Quim before Partizan regained the lead through Stjepan Bobek, the club’s all-time leading goalscorer. Martins however had the last word, tying the game up and ensuring the tournament started with a classic.

Away goals did not feature until later years so it was all to play for in Belgrade but an outstanding performance from Milutinović who scored four saw tthe Black-Whites win 5-2 and progress to a Quarter-Final match against Real Madrid. The inaugural tournament beginning at the round of 16 stage. ‘The interesting part’, as most modern Champions League fans now know it as.

Madrid had advanced comfortably over the Swiss side Servette winning 2-0 in Geneva and 5-0 at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium. The new title for the Chamartin stadium had been voted in by the club’s General Assembly in January of ‘55, despite opposition from Bernabéu who continued to refer to the stadium by it original name. Servette were coached by Karl Rappan in his second spell at the club. The Austrian achieved notoriety after a successful World Campaign with Switzerland in 1938 and he would return to the National team job and take them to the Quarter-Finals in 1958. Rappan developed the Verrou (Bolt) system, a variation on the W-M which saw an extra ‘back’ added to the defensive line. This was combined with a tendency to drop deep, and mark tightly making it difficult for the opposition to break them down. Finding a way through was not a problem for Di Stéfano and co. but proponents of defensive football would have their day in the European Cup in the not so distant future.

Notably, at half-time in the first leg in Switzerland with the game tied at 0-0 the young Spanish prince and future King Juan Carlos, paid the team a visit. With a large contingent of Spanish exiles in the crowd, his highness addressed Di Stéfano asking, ‘Saeta – los emigrantes esperan una victoria’ (Blonde Arrow, the emigrants are hoping for a win) Di Stéfano was not troubled by royal protocols and told the exiled monarch (if you believe the nice version) ‘Bugger off you little squit!’^

In the remaining ties there were wins for Vörös Lobogó and their star Nandor Hidegkuti. Vörös Lobogó (Red Flag) was the rebranded name for the legendary MTK Budapest who had been nationalised and taken over by the secret police. Their first-leg 6-3 victory over Anderlecht saw Péter Palotás hit the European Cup’s first ever hat-trick. Palotas had lost his place in the National team to Hidegkuti but this does not seem to have created any tension on the field, and he added another in Belgium in a 4-1 win for the Hungarians as they advanced to the last eight.

Edinburgh’s Hibernian, led by their Famous Five frontline of Gordon Smith, Bobby Johnstone, Lawrie Reilly, Eddie Turnbull and Willie Ormond, saw off the challenge of Rot-Weiss Essen to book their spot in the next round. Whilst West Germany were World Champions and Rot-Weiss Essen included in their ranks Helmut Rahn goalscorer of the winning goal in the 1954 final, the Bundesliga was eight years away, as was large-scale professionalism. Rahn missed the opening leg as Hibs strolled to a 4-1 victory followed by a 1-1 draw in Edinburgh.

Djurgårdens and Rapid Vienna progressed by virtue of defeating Gwardia Warsaw and PSV Eindhoven respectively. French Champions Reims overcame Aarhus 4-2 on aggregate although two late goals from the Danes in the second leg, suggest things were closer than reality.

Unquestionably the tie of the round was FC Saarbrücken versus Milan. The Saarland region was rich with coal deposits and in 1946 the French separated the area from the Allied Control Council for Germany and established the Saar Protectorate. The Saar Protectorate became a member of FIFA in 1950 and a founder member of UEFA in 1954, as a result of which saw Saarbrücken entered into the European Cup.

‘The most interesting football team in Europe’^ according to FIFA President Jules Rimet, FCS (as they are known) were a strong side, having been allowed to compete in France’s Ligue 2 but without points being recorded. A full-time application to become a member of the French Football Federation was refused which then led to the club creating their own competition, the Internationaler Saarlandpokal. The tournament saw FCS take on a number of teams with the opponents who had the best results against the hosts, making the final four. In many ways it was a precursor to the European Cup itself and featured clubs such as Standard Liege, Hajduk Split and Austria Vienna, alongside French and German outfits. Most famously a tour of Spain in the early 50s saw FCS take on Real Madrid at the Chamartin stadium. Goals from Balzert, Clemens, Binkert and Prieur saw the visitors record a famous 4-0 win. With post-war tensions abating, FCS were admitted into the West German league system and reached the National final in 1952, losing 3-2 to VfB Stuttgart.

Milan led by the Swedish pair Gunnar Nordahl and Nils Liedholm, two parts of the famous Gre-No-Li trio (Gunnar Gren had left in 1953), had won the Scudetto in ‘55 despite sacking coach Bela Guttmann in February. The Hungarian memorably telling a press-conference ‘I have been sacked even though I am neither a criminal nor a homosexual.’^ From then on, Guttmann would insist in all future contracts that he could not be sacked whilst his team was top of the league. Ex-Milan and Uruguay forward Ettore Puricelli took the reins and oversaw the club’s first adventure into the European Cup.

The first-leg at the San Siro was held on November 1 (almost two months after Sporting and Partizan had faced off) and a mere 18,000 fans witnessed Peter Krieger give Saarbrücken a shock early lead. Normal service resumed, however and goals from Amleto Frignani, Giorgio Dal Monte and the great Juan Alberto Schiaffino, goalscorer in the 1950 World Cup Final, gave the Rossoneri a 3-1 advantage. Just before half-time, however, and at the so-called ‘best time to score’ Waldemar Philippi pulled it back to 3-2. The oft-mentioned cliché had some merit in this case, as a stirring second-half saw Saarbrücken score two goals inside three minutes and take a 4-3 win back to the newly opened Ludwigsparkstadion.

With 15 minutes remaining of the tie, Milan were heading out. Despite Valentino Valli’s eighth minute strike, Herbert Binkert had levelled before half-time. The home-side’s spirit was broken however with a quarter of an hour left on Dutch referee Klaas Schipper’s watch. An own goal from Theodor Puff made it 5-5 on aggregate and though that would have been enough to ensure a play-off match, a second from Valli and one from Eros Beraldo saw Milan advance to the next round.

‘Maybe [Milan] underestimated us a little in the first leg,’ said Werner Otto, Saarbrücken winger who combined his playing career with a role in the Government’s pension office. ‘And then, here, they really upped the ante. But it could have been different. It would not have been such a big surprise for us to go through. We were a big club.’^

In October 1955, the Saar statute Referendum saw the voters reject the opportunity to remain an independent entity with an economic union with France. This was seen as a demonstration to reunite with West Germany and in October 1956 the Saar Treaty between France and West Germany was signed. On January 1 1957 Saarland became a state within West Germany and the Saarland Football Association was absorbed by the German Football Association (DFB). FC Saarbrücken never returned to European football and now play in the lower reaches of German football. Their brushes with history, however, are not over and in 2020 they became the first German team from the fourth-tier to reach the semi-finals of the DFB Pokal.

Milan drew Rapid Vienna in the Quarter-Finals, and after a 1-1 draw in Vienna, they destroyed the Austrians in the San-Siro. Goals from Mariani, Nordahl (2), Ricagni (2), Frignani and Schiaffino gave them a 7-2 win.

In the quarter-finals, Hibernian and Djurgårdens completed their tie before the other matches got underway. Due to the Swedish winter, Djurgårdens pitch was frozen, and with no undersoil heating, their ‘home’ leg was played in Glasgow at Firhill Stadium, home of Partick Thistle. After the Swedes took an early lead and hit the crossbar shortly after, Hibs, backed by the majority of the 21,000 crowd, found their stride, scoring three without reply and missing a penalty. The second-leg took place three days later in Edinburgh with Eddie Turnbull’s goal sealing progress for the Scots. It would be three months before they found out their opponents in the last four.

Awaiting them, when winter concluded, were Reims who knocked out Vörös Lobogó. Reims had taken the decision to move the game to Paris (125km to the South), and they saw a much larger crowd witness a 4-2 home win.

In the away leg, Reims capacity for conceding goals and leads was illustrated as they surrendered a 4-1 advantage to tie the match 4-4. Whilst it’s likely they took their foot off the gas, knowing they had to concede 5 goals to force a playoff, it still outlined a weakness that would cost them in the future.

The Real Madrid v Partizan tie illustrated some of the major challenges UEFA faced in developing the tournament during the Cold War. Politically the two countries were subscribers to diametrically opposed philosophies. Over 1500 members of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia had fought against Franco during the Spanish Civil War, half of whom were killed. It was left to Raimundo Saporta to convince Franco of the merits for his regime’s image to allow the communist side into Spain. Saporta’s success led to the game going ahead and the first leg was scheduled for Christmas Day, apparently a joke by Bernabéu to remind the atheist communists of the holiday Marx had boycotted. At the time the clubs scheduled their matches independently and the first two rounds took five months to complete.

Remarkably, despite the investment in Madrid’s stadium, floodlights were not installed at the time, so the game kicked off at 3pm. This was not uncommon. For a competition so synonymous with the advent of floodlight football, seven of the 16 teams who competed in the first season did not have floodlights at their home stadium.

Any lingering festive spirit within the Partizan ranks would have dissipated after the first ten minutes. The French referee, Dean Harzic chopped off two goals, decisions which, by Di Stéfano’s own admission, were incorrect. Madrid soon found their stride in the low winter sunshine, Castano scoring on 12 and 23 minutes, Gento adding a third before half-time. Di Stéfano scored a fourth, receiving the ball inside the box and turning sharply to finish past the keeper and Los Blancos had half a foot in the semis.

The second-leg was an altogether different affair. Saporta had avoided dealing with visas and got the Real players and staff into Yugoslavia via a series of obscure border posts but he could do nothing about the playing conditions. Quite simply, the game was played on a field of snow. In the footage, it’s very difficult to make out the white shirts of the Madrid players and it’s clear that moving naturally is not possible. Understandably, the Yugoslavs adapted better and Milutinović’s eighth goal of the competition gave them a 1-0 advantage going into the break. Prvoslav Mihajlović who would, six years later, coach Yugoslavia and take them to the semis of the World Cup, converted a penalty on 46 minutes but Milutinović’s second came too late with three minutes to go. Di Stéfano saw out the game in the centre of defence. The headline in ABC (Madrid’s most popular newspaper) read: ‘Winter beat Napoleon, but winter couldn’t beat Di Stéfano.’

‘I can’t believe we only lost 3-0. We should have been stuffed out of sight,’^ said Real goalkeeper Juanito Alonso. It was an early indicator of Real Madrid’s capacity to grind results out when required and the first-ever clash between the two most successful clubs in European Cup history was set.

A.C. Milan and Real Madrid share 21 European Cups. 41% of the 63 finals have featured one or the other and their semi-final in 1956 was their first of 15 meetings in the competition. There were no concerns about crowd numbers now for Real and 129,000 fans, mainly male, mainly decked in suits and hats, witnessed the first leg at the Bernabéu. It was a perfect illustration of the appeal and potential of the tournament and would have had Don Santiago rubbing his hands as he contemplated his next Galactico signing.

Footage of the game is dominated by sharp camera angle changes and rough transitions between incidents, but we can see Nordahl equalising beautifully. Receiving a chipped pass from Dal Monte just inside the box, he evades the two defenders and slams the bouncing ball past the Madrid goalkeeper Alonso. A goal one might expect his countryman Zlatan, to execute. Hector Rial had put Real ahead and Joseito restored their advantage before Schifanno struck at the second attempt to make it 2-2. Madrid’s third was scored by Roque Olsen, another Argentine who capitalized on uncharacteristically bad Italian defending, nodding home unmarked from a Gento cross before Di Stéfano scored another crucial fourth goal on 62 minutes.

Two weeks later in Milan only 30,000 would attend the second leg. Milan would win 2-1 on the night, but their second of two penalties from Dal Monte came too late to make a push for the crucial tying goal, and Madrid would make their way into the final. Milan could console themselves with victory in the Copa Latina, defeating Spanish Champions Athletic Bilbao in the final, which at the time was considered a comparable achievement.

Reims would be Real’s opponents in the inaugural final after their victory over Hibernian. It’s fair to say both clubs in this semi-final did not have such a lasting impact on the event. Hibs would never again compete in the tournament and whilst Reims would make the final again in 1959, their last appearance in the competition would occur in 1962.

Hibs gave a strong account of themselves over the course of the two games but the brilliance of Raymond Kopa proved their undoing. Goals from Michel Leblond on 67 minutes and René Bliard in the dying seconds, gave Reims a commanding advantage to take to Scotland. Despite the hostility from the British associations and press prior to the start of the competition, Hibs’ progress had captured the imagination of the public, north of Hadrian’s wall at least. 45,000 folks attended the return game at Easter Road which was noted for its uneven playing surface allowing teams one half of playing downhill. Though his recollections may be tinted with green spectacles, Hibs forward Turnbull recalled in his autobiography:

‘To this day, I still do not know how we did not win that match. We battered them silly…but somehow their goal survived intact. It was largely down to brilliant organization by Kopa that they withstood our attack. The Little General commanded his army superbly.’^

Reims won the game 1-0. Léon Glovack (like Kopa of Polish descent) with the goal which had been setup by a beautiful Kopa pass. Turnbull’s quote illustrates the centrality of Kopa to the Reims system mirroring the role Di Stéfano performed with Madrid. Kopa originally, Kopaszewski, was the son of Polish emigrants who had came to France via Germany after the First World War. Noted for his exceptional dribbling ability, Kopa had followed in his grandfather and father’s footsteps and spent his early teens in the coal mines of Northern France. It was a tough environment, he would lose a finger in an accident and his father would die at the age of 56 from silicosis.

And so it was. The first European Cup Final, held in Paris as was originally planned, a face-off between the two number nines: Di Stéfano and Kopa who would end that year as second and third in the inaugural Balon D’Or respectively.

Reims were coached by Albert Batteux, who would go on to become the most successful French coach of all-time. A local Reims boy and one of 11 children he built a team according to Michel Hidalgo around ‘short passes, technical ability and a collective spirit.’^ A one-club man, he concluded his career by captaining them to their first Ligue 1 title in 1949 and would go on to win eight titles as a manager, five with Reims and three with Saint Ettiene. He would also take France to the last four of the 1958 World Cup, where they were on the wrong end of a Pele hat-trick in a 5-2 loss.

Reims started superbly and were two goals to the good inside ten minutes. First, LeBlond headed in after a Kopa free-kick and then Templin added a second following a mistake from Alonso in the Real goal.

Enter Di Stéfano. ‘That’s when (he) started to play,’ said Hidalgo. ‘He crucified us and brought the scores level.’^ Strictly speaking, it was Hector Rial who tied the game at 2-2 but Di Stéfano started the comeback and by all accounts, to use a British expression, ‘took the game by the scruff of the neck’, scoring on 14 minutes to make it 2-1. Batteux had LeBlond man-mark Di Stéfano, a trick Milan employed in their second leg, but he was nowhere to be seen as Di Stéfano who had started the move in his own half, made an impeccably well-timed run behind the Reims backline controlling Muñoz pass with the outside of his boot and sliding to finish before goalkeeper René-Jean Jacquet could smother.

With a half-hour left on the clock Hidalgo put Reims back ahead, heading in despite his 5ft 7 inch frame, from another Kopa free-kick. Five minutes later however, starting the tradition of key goals from Real center backs in finals, Marquitos marched forward, getting on the end of a Di Stéfano through ball and bundled the ball in at the second attempt. It was a rare goal for the Spaniard, full name Marcos Alonso, who only scored once more in his Madrid career. His son and grandson who share his name would also play professionally. Marcos Alonso Peña for Atletico Madrid and Barcelona during the 80s and Marcos Alonso Mendoza who would repeat his Grandfather’s achievement, winning the Champions League with Chelsea in 2021.

With 11 minutes left, Rial struck his second to make it 4-3 tapping the ball in at the back post after a long run from Gento. Rial, an Argentine but by now a naturalised Spaniard, had been signed on Di Stéfano’s recommendation and made a devastating left side alongside Gento. He scored five goals that season and highlighted Di Stéfano’s influence at the club and desire to surround himself with complimentary players.

Real Madrid were crowned the first Champions of Europe. The trophy had been donated by L’Equipe who had commissioned master goldsmith Léon Maeght to create it and the journalists presented the medals to both teams. Following the match, Di Stéfano entered the Reims dressing room with the trophy full of champagne (presumably from Reims). Both teams drank from the cup in celebration of a terrific final and the dawn of a new era. Real also left Paris with another shiny piece of silver, the signature of Raymond Kopa.

The legend of Real Madrid had began.