57-58 European Cups

3. European Champion Club's Cup

1. Fair's Cup

The Tournaments

The first Fair's Cup was completed after 3 years.
This competition had started before the First ECCC, but was scheduled to finish in two years. It took three years to complete the 23-game tournament.
It had started after Ernst Thommen, a Swiss vice-president of UEFA, had called a meeting on organising such tournament. The tournament was called The Industrial Fairs' Inter-Cities Cup, but was known simply as "The Fairs' Cup". The original idea was the cities with an international trade fairs would field a select team from the cities and only the cities with an international fair would be allowed to play. But, even at the first year the cities sent a club team rather than a select team from the clubs of the cities as in the examples of Barcelona CF, Birmingham City FC, Lausanne-Sports, and Internazionale Milano FC.

Ireland, Northern Ireland, and German Democratic Republic joined the cups.

Fairs' cup started with a different format than the European Champions' Cup.
The first round of the tournament was played in four groups with a league format. Four group winners qualified to the semi finals and the rest of the tournament was played in a cup format, that is in knock-out style.

European Champions' Cup maintained its format from the previous year.