Introduction: Background and History
Confederation name: Union of European Football Associations
Acronym: UEFA
Established date: 15 June 1954 A.D
Date of first Football Association Cup
congress: 2 March 1955
Headquarter: Nyon, Switzerland
First General Secretary: Henri Delaunay
First President: Ebbe Schwartz
Headquarter(s): Paris, France (1954 – 1959)
Bern, Switzerland (1959 – 1995)
Nyon, Switzerland (1995 onwards)
Headquarter of UEFA at Nyon, Switzerland
UEFA, the Union of European Football Associations is one of the six continental football federations. Among the six confederations that are part of FIFA, UEFA stands as the wealthiest one. It certainly has the strongest influence on football all over the world as World’s top players play for the European power houses. UEFA was established with the common task to oversee and organize league and national team competitions in European region. This continental football federation was formed as the result of the discussion of Italian, French and Belgian football associations hosted by Switzerland in Basel, Switzerland. Hence, UEFA started its top journey from June 15, 1954 with the governing body consisting Henri Delaunay to stand as the first General Secretary and Ebbe Schwartz as the first president. UEFA had it’s headquarter located in Paris until 1959 when it moved to Bern and then finally to Nyon, Switzerland in 1995. UEFA has been organizing various leagues and tournament for both men and women. It organizes both nation’s competitions as well nation wide and continent wide club competitions. It organizes various prestigious competitions like UEFA Champion’s League, Euro Cup, UEFA Cup etc. These leagues and tournament’s growing popularity is certainly making this confederation stronger and influencing than ever.
UEFA began with just 3 full time staffs which have increased to 340 people of more than 29 different nationalities. UEFA employs administrators, secretaries, IT specialist, coaches, journalists, translators at its administrative HQ. This shows that UEFA certainly is the top confederation. It has been able to tune itself into a dynamic organization to cope with the vast requirements of the modern-day football. UEFA had 23 member associations in the beginning; there are now 53 associations under UEFA.
UEFA Executive Committee:
An executive committee governs UEFA. The executive committee of UEFA comprises of UEFA president and 15 other members elected by UEFA congress. The Executive Committee does not include more than one member from the same member association. The committee does the work of making decisions on all matters which do not fall within the legal or statutory jurisdiction of the UEFA Congress or another organ. It manages UEFA. It has several duties like overall control of UEFA and the issuing of necessary instructions, definition of organizational structure etc.
The Executive Committee also appoints general secretary who keeps the responsibility of organization management and direction of the UEFA administration.
President: Michel Platini
Vice Presidents: Senes Erzik
Ángel María Villar Llona
Giancarlo Abete
Geoffrey Thompson
Marios N Lefkaritis
Members: Sergey Fursenko
Allah Hansen
Avraham Luzon
Mircea Sandu
Michael van Praag
Dr Theo Zwanziger
Grigoriy Surkis
Borislav Mihaylov
František Laurinec
Peter Gilliéron
General Secretary: Gianni Infantino
Member nations:
The confederation was established with the initial membership 25 national associations but the present number of members is 53. The number gradually increased after 1990, Soviet Union broke into various states and became USSR. The 53 member nations along with their IOC code have been listed below.