Christ the state of our fanbase....fancy not knowing the difference
Not true, in fact it's a laughable comparison...out of all the comps the Uefa was (ECWC was bigger) the poor relation, made up for the weaker teams who were not good enough to win anything and evolved from the inter city fairs cup which is a 50% total of the Scum's success in Europe.
I don't wish to somehow make the trophy bigger than it actually is but it is the biggest European trophy that we've won since it's replaced the other defunct comps...that said I don't join in to the 'Champions of Europe' song because we're not.
Now it is you that has a distorted view of history.
The European cup had only one entrant per country, and in effect only 4 or 5 realistic winners per season.
The cup winners cup had only one entrant per country.
The UEFA Cup was generally recognised as the hardest of the competitions to win, which generally had teams 2 to 5 in the leagues. You only have to look at the list of winners in the 80s (Real Madrid twice, Juventus, Ajax, Maradona’s Napoli, Inter, Spurs, Anderlecht who were a powerhouse back then) to see the strength of it. The level of teams that played in it, now olay in the Champions League.
Yes it evolved from the Fairs Cup, which UEFA don’t recognise, purely because they didn’t organise it.
Yes winning the Europa Cup was great, and to me matches the achievement of the 3 previous European wins, but in respect of competitiveness the UEFA Cup, as was before the Champions league was invented and diluted it, was a much stronger competition than the now defunct Cup Winners Cup, or the current incarnation of the Europa League, but ultimately that doesn’t matter, you can only beat the opponents you are against, and I will always be grateful to him for the Cup success, and wish him well