Football fans thought it was a joke when they heard the Champions League anthem ring out during the coronation of King Charles in Westminster Abbey last May. It’s simple though, the UEFA song is a cover of the coronation anthem of the British monarchs.
On the occasion of the return of the Champions League, Golazo, the Sports.fr podcast from French Football Weekly, offers you four notable episodes in the history of the essential UEFA club competition. We return in particular to the incredible creation of the “Champion Clubs Cup” in the 1950s. Journalists from The Team are not only at the initiative of the tournament, they have carried out a coup to push UEFA to take care of the organization.
In 1992, in order to modernize what was renamed the Champions League, UEFA found a graphic identity, with a ball formed by stars as its logo, and created its own anthem. Tony Britten, an English composer, invented absolutely nothing, he asked a philharmonic orchestra to replay Zadok the Priestthe coronation anthem of the Kings of Great Britain since… 1727!
The composer therefore changed the lyrics, writing the text in English before having two thirds of the song translated into the two other official UEFA languages, French and German. Zadok the Priest was broadcast during the coronation of Charles III and his wife Camilla Parker Bowles as king and queen consort of the United Kingdom on May 6, which surprised many in front of the TV, the start of the song being identical to the LDC anthem…
