By Kevin Philips Momanyi
The UEFA Champions League badge of honour is a preserve for seasoned or outstanding winners in the tournament, an elite requirement that new champions, Manchester City, are yet to meet.
The badge is an image of the European cup which is knitted on the left sleeve of a football club’s jersey. The number of times the club has won European titles is usually inscribed inside the badge.
The medallion is provided to the teams by the UEFA administration. Clubs that win the UEFA Champions League or the UEFA Europa League at least five times in history or triumph three times in a row qualify for the badge of honour.
Manchester City won their first ever UEFA Champions League crown on Saturday when they beat fellow finalists Inter Milan 1-0 at the Atatürk Olympic Stadium in Istanbul, Türkiye.
The English club, which completed a sensational treble in the 2022/2023 season, will have to win the next two Champions League trophies or wait to triumph four more times to qualify for the UEFA badge of honour.
This essentially means that in the upcoming 2023/2024 season, football fans world over won’t see the UEFA badge on the sleeves of Manchester City players’ jerseys.
Elite group
There are six teams that qualify for the badge of honour, having lifted the UEFA Champions League trophy at least five times each or triumphed three times in a row. They are Real Madrid (14 titles; three trophies in a row), AC Milan (7 titles), Liverpool (6), Bayern Munich (6 titles; three trophies in a row), Barcelona (5).
Ajax Amsterdam, which has four UEFA Champions League titles, also has the privilege of displaying the badge of honour for winning the title three times consecutively, between 1970 and 1973. The fourth and final time the Netherlands club lifted the trophy was in the 1994/1995 season.
Spanish side, Barcelona, became the latest club to be feted with the badge of honour after lifting its fifth UEFA Champions League trophy in 2015.
Manchester United and Inter Milan, which have three UEFA Champions League trophies each, need to win at least two more titles to join the elite group. Chelsea and Juventus need to add at least three more trophies to their already secured two titles.
The other teams that have two UEFA Champions League trophies in their cabinet are Benfica, FC Porto and Nottingham Forest.
Sevilla heroics
The badge of honour is also worn by teams that triumph outstandingly in the UEFA Europa League.
Only Sevilla meets the qualification for the badge in the UEFA Europa League, having lifted the trophy seven times, and also winning it three times in a row between 2013 and 2016.
Sevilla are the current winners of the UEFA Europa title, having triumphed against Italian side AS Roma 4-1 on post-match penalties following a 1-1 draw in regulation time. The final was played at the Puskas Arena in Budapest on May 31.
The other teams that have a high number of UEFA Europa League titles are Liverpool, Juventus, Inter Milan and Atletico Madrid, which have three trophies each.
Tournament for the best
The UEFA Champions League is a top-division football tournament of 32 European teams that compete in five rounds for the right to be crowned the best club on the continent.
Winners, runners-up and at most two other top performers of European highest-ranked leagues usually participate in the tournament.
The UEFA Europa League is European football tournament’s second-division which draws teams ranked fifth or sixth in their respective leagues.
UEFA recently introduced the third-division tournament, the UEFA Europa Conference League, whose second season final was won by West Ham United.
The English side, coached by former Manchester United manager David Moyes, beat Italian rivals, Fiorentina, 2-1 at the Fortuna Arena in Prague, Czech Republic on June 7 to lift the trophy.
The 2022/2023 UEFA Europa runners-up, AS Roma, lifted the inaugural UEFA Europa Conference League trophy when they beat Netherlands side, Feyenoord, 1-0 in the finals on May 25, 2022.
