UEFA Women's Champions League
 |
|
| Founded | 2001 |
|---|---|
| Region | Europe (UEFA) |
| Number of teams | 59 |
| Current champions |  Olympique Lyonnais (3rd title) |
| Most successful club(s) |  Frankfurt (4 titles) |
| Website | Official website |
 2016–17 season
|
|
The UEFA Women's Champions League is an international women's association football club competition for teams that play in UEFA nations. The competition was first played in 2001–02 under the name UEFA Women's Cup, and renamed the UEFA Women's Champions League for the 2009–10 edition. The most significant change was including national runners-up from the top eight ranked nations and playing the final as a one-off final in the same city as UEFA Champions League final, as opposed to the two-legged ties in previous years.
1. FFC Frankfurt is the most successful club in the competitions history, winning the title four times.
The UEFA Women's Cup was an association football competition for European clubs. The competition was started in the 2001–02 season in response to the increased interest in women's football. It is sometimes called the Women's European Cup, given its status as the only UEFA club competition for women. Teams qualify by virtue of winning their top national competition, be it a league or cup, if there is no national league.
A preliminary round was played to reduce teams to 32, in the first season only two teams played a two-legged match, the following seasons were played as four team mini-tournaments which had the winner advance to the group stage. Teams were then divided into eight groups of four. The groups were played again as mini-tournaments at a single location over the course of five days. The group winners then advanced to the quarter-finals. The knock-out rounds were played as two-legged. That included the final which was only played as a single leg in 2002.
For the 2004–05 season the group stage was played in four groups with the top two teams advancing to the quarter-finals. That resulted in more qualifying groups.
On 11 December 2008, UEFA announced that the competition would be reformatted and renamed to the UEFA Women's Champions League. As in the men's game, the new tournament aims to include runners-up of the top women's football leagues in Europe, and the final is to be played in a single match.
On 31 March 2008 UEFA confirmed that the eight top countries according to the UEFA league coefficient between 2003–04 and 2007–08 would be awarded two places in the new Women's Champions League. These leagues were:
While seven of the above associations have held a top eight spot until today several associations have entered the top eight. Due to coefficient changes ahead of 2010–11, Iceland gained a place in the top eight, at the expense of Norway. In 2012–13, Norway regained its top-eight place at Iceland's expense. Then, for 2013–14, Austria replaced Norway in the top eight. The Czech Republic replaced Austria in the top eight for 2014–15. In the current edition the Czech Republic itself is replaced by Spain.
...
Wikipedia