Wolverhampton Wanderers are the talk of the Premier League with their army of top-class Portuguese imports, some of whom have played in the Champions League.
But did you know that Wolves contributed more than any other club to the creation of the Champions League?
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In the 1950s, before European football had really expanded beyond national borders, Wolves were one of the top teams in England, winning three league titles and the FA Cup in 1949 and 1960.
During this decade, the Black Country Club took advantage of the relaxation of the FA’s regulations regarding the installation of floodlights and decided to compete in a series of “floodlit friendlies” against some of the best teams on the continent.
Perhaps the most famous of these games was against Hungarian giants Honved in 1954. Honved’s biggest star was football legend Ferenc Puskas, captain of the Hungarian Mighty Magyars who had beaten England 6-3 in the ‘Game of the Century’ at Wembley in 1953. England’s centre-back that day was Wolves captain Billy Wright.
Wolves’ 3-2 victory under the new floodlights captivated Europe and the whole country, with the BBC broadcasting the game live.
It was Wolves’ second win in a floodlit match. They had already Spartak Moscow earlier this year, leading many in England to dub them “world champions.”
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The game at Molineaux was L’Equipe editor Gabriel Hanon believed that Wolves could not become champions until they beat Spartak or Honved in Moscow and Budapest respectively. It was then that Hanon began to campaign for a competition in which Europe’s best clubs would regularly compete against each other.
Thus, the European Cup began on time for the 1955/56 season.
More than 60 years have passed since those first European football nights under floodlights, but Wolves were instrumental in the creation of the Champions League as we know it today.
Imagine if we had never seen Zinedine Zidane’s volley; we had never seen Lionel Messi tackle Jerome Boateng; Gareth Bale had never scored his overhead kick in the final and Arsenal had not been knocked out in the round of 16 every year.
Although Wolves missed out on the first editions of the European Cup, they beat reigning champions Real Madrid 5-4 in home and away friendlies in 1957.
Eventually they took part in the European Cup and reached the quarter-finals in 1960, where they were eliminated by Barcelona.
