I’ve read the articles on Wikipedia, but I still don’t quite get the difference. It says the Champions League is more prestigious, but why? Anyone care to summarize the difference or give me some insight?
Also, why is a tournament called a “League”?
Thanks.
They differ in the teams that participate and the format of the competition.
The Champions League is contested by the league winners of each nation; in theory, these are the best teams in each country (proving their mettle against the other members of the country’s league over the course of a season). Up to a certain stage clubs knocked out of the Champions League are transferred to the UEFA Cup.
The UEFA Cup is contested by the league runners-up and cup winners; the not-quite-so-good clubs and the ones that potentially got lucky in the cup competition. For most of the competition’s history the format was a straight knock-out tournament; the introduction of a league format is relatively recent and probably related to money for TV rights.
In short, the Champions League is made up of a smaller number of clubs who’ve proven themselves against tougher opposition over the course of a season, and who will play clubs of similar standing in the CL.
The Champions League is a descendant of the old European Cup. The EC was contested by the teams who had won the season-long national championship. Nowadays the CL includes clubs who have finished second, third or fourth in the bigger national championships but really it is only about television markets. The “biggest club in the world” are Manchester United, but they’ve only won as many European Cups as Nottingham Forest have, Fuck em. And they really fucking hate it how many times Liverpool have won the thing.
The term “league” means that groups of teams play each other round robin. Both tournaments used to be straight knockouts, with teams simply playing each other hone and away (except for the European Cup Final). When the European Cup introduced group stages, its name was changed to the Champions League (I believe there is officially no apostrophe, grammar fans). The UEFA Cup has kept its name despite introducing a group stage, perhaps to avoid (more) confusion.
Got it, thanks for the replies everyone.
The World Cup has group stages, is it a “league”?
The Champions League has adopted the “League” simply because it’s on its way to becoming a full-fledged league, with regular members, along with certain members who get promoted and relegated every year.
In the beginning, there was the European Cup competition (started 1955). The winners of the various national domestic leagues were put into a cup competition, where teams are paired by draw, play a home-and-home tie, with the aggregate winner going on and the loser out of the competition. The final was a single game, played at some neutral site (the Parc des Princes in Paris, for the first final in 1956). The champion gained automatic entry into the next year’s competition, regardless of whether they had won that year’s domestic league championship (the European Cup competition being played simultaneously with the next season of domestic football).
In 1960, a new competition was added, the Cup Winners’ Cup. This was contested by the winners of the previous season’s domestic cup comptetitions (which are contested simultaneously in each nation with that nation’s domestic league). The set up was similar to the European Cup. A somewhat more eclectic group of nations ended up participating because winning a national cup competition is easier to do for a less competitive team than winning the year-long league competition.
In 1971, UEFA established a competition that adopted qualifying standards from the Inter Cities Fairs Cup. That competition started in 1955, but was contested between teams from cities that held annual international trade fairs; how the teams had done in their domestic leagues was unimportant. By 1968, the Fairs Cup had changed to inviting teams that had finished in second place in their domestic leagues the year before. In 1971, UEFA took this idea over and launched the UEFA Cup. This competition invited anywhere from 1 to 3 teams from European countries, based upon their standing in the prior year’s domestic league. Thus, for example, from England the second, third and fourth place teams might qualify; from Lichtenstein only the second place team would qualify. This was, again, a traditional cup competition.
Then, in 1991, in response to complaints from perennially successful teams that UEFA wasn’t leveraging the marketability of their success into sufficient television revenue, etc., the European Cup competition format was changed. From 1991, after one or more knock-out rounds, there would be anywhere from one to three “group” rounds, where the teams still in the competition were drawn into four to six team groups, which then played a double-round-robin (home and home). Eventually, either the finals, or the semi-finals and finals would be contested as knock-outs. This had the advantage of guaranteeing advertising and gate revenues for participants who otherwise might crash out early. The Cup Winners’ Cup and the UEFA Cup were left alone (for the most part).
In 1999, facing continuing dissention from the large, powerful clubs, who were threatening to establish their own Super League (thus removing the revenue stream from UEFA’s control), UEFA revamped the competitions. The Cup Winners’ Cup was terminated; a domestic Cup winner is put into the UEFA Cup competition. The new UEFA Champions League has two types of participants: those who are allowed to participate, but must go through one to three knockout rounds, and those who are seeded directly into the group stage. Which type of participant you are depends upon three things: how your country’s national team fares in international competition, how your country’s club teams fare in inter-European competition, and how your team has fared in inter-European competition. There are currently three knockout rounds, then a group stage with four-team groups, then a knock-out phase with Octo-, quarter-, and semi-finals, as well as the final.
The UEFA Cup was also revamped in 1999. It’s very difficult to summarize; suffice it to say that a lot of teams end up competing in the UEFA Cup, now, including some that crash out of the Champions League relatively early on. The format has changed to emulate that of the Champions League, with knockouts, then groups, then back to knockouts.
So, in sum, the Champions League represents the best of the best in Europe. The UEFA Cup represents the wannabes, the rejects, and the failures. You can guess which is the more important competition, as a result. 
Well the group stages are mini leagues, yes. “Cup” implies that a tournament will at least culminate in a knockout stage, if it is not already a pure knockout tournament. Even then, the 1950 World Cup Final tournament consisted entirely of group games, a first round and a final round, with no knockout games at all.
Very interesting. I suppose it’s especially hard to understand because of all the changes over time. Here’s another naive question from an American:
We don’t have anything even remotely like this in the US. Teams work towards and fans watching, say, our baseball or basketball leagues only really care about winning the league. How much could anyone really care about winning the EPL or La Liga, when there are competitions that go on even further than that? Particularly when players are being transferred and traded around all over the place as if it were one big league. I could see winning the EPL would be a big deal if that, and only that, qualified you for the big tournament. But this last year there were 4 EPL teams in the Champions League.
…does that question even make sense?
Well, the fact that 4 EPL teams qualify for the Champions League has diluted the prestige of the EPL, slightly. But still, winning one of the big three or four domestic leagues is widely considered at least as big a task as winning the mini-league-plus-knockout that is the Champions League, in which luck and a temporary run of good form can go a long way to winning the thing.
Liverpool won the CL a couple of years back despite being at most the third best team in England, but they crave the Premier League title more, because it has been seventeen years since they last proved that they were the best team in England. I guess a club that has won a few recent domestic championships might value the CL more, though.
[ETA]Oh, and the really big clubs don’t care much about the UEFA Cup. A season in which they won only that would be disappointing for most of them. The mere fact that they were in the UEFA Cup tournament at all would be disappointing, because it would mean they had failed in the Champions League or not even qualified for it.
Interesting. Thanks for the follow-up. All this complexity is just another reason that soccer kicks ass, IMHO.
Oh an one more, somewhat unanswerable, question: Do people generally care more about their national team (winning, say, the World Cup or Euro Cup), or their favorite club team (winning the Champions League)? As I’ve been watching more and more great soccer, I find myself more riveted by national football. Of course when it comes to other US sports, say Olympic basketball, I could give a rats ass about national teams.
I don’t follow a particular club side, but many people who do say that they care much more about the club’s fortunes than the national team’s. Those who only show interest in football when the World Cup and European Championships come round are sometimes sneered at.
Me, I prefer international games and only actually experience the excitement/torture of being a fan when I’m watching England. Club football I watch with and interested but largely dispassionate eye, apart from a deep-seated irrational loathing of Liverpool that goes back to childhood.
It’s one of those perennial ‘if you had the choice’ questions, England for the world cup or your own team for the Premiership (never mind the Champions League!). And as Usram hints, many would go for the latter. I think I probably would
Different teams, and different fans, have different expectations of any one season. There’s realism involved! Chelsea and Man Ure both expect to win the Premiership. Arsenal and Liverpool would consider it a failure if they didn’t qualify for the Champions League. Other teams would regard a top-4 finish or even a Uefa Cup qualification as a huge success in its own right. For those newly promoted to the Premiership, simply surviving in the top flight is an achievement.
I suppose Man U. would like to win more times than Nottingham Forest have, and Chelsea and Arsenal would like to win at least once. Liverpool have won the thing how many times?
Then there are really lofty achievments, like winning a double, or better, a treble. Double = winning the League and the domestic Cup; treble = winning both those AND your European competition (preferably the Champions League). Doing something along those lines is pretty damn amazing, and quite highly prized by the fans; loathed by the enemy. 
Interestingly enough, this year, there was an attempt to start something similar to the Champions League here in the US. Top MLS clubs competed with top Mexican clubs in a SuperLiga. One can expect that the concept can be expanded to include other top flight teams from CONCACAF. In a way, it’s ahead of the European concept, because it is intended to showcase topflight teams in a true super league, precisely the type of thing UEFA has tried to avoid.
Four. In Istanbul.
YNWA. 
I suppose it’s easier to win the Champions League when you give up fighting for the Premiership title at the same time.
So, to translate to American (if I understand correctly) : the Champion’s Cup is kind of like the NCAA basketball tournament: winners of various leagues/conferences, plus runners-up and lower finishers from the stronger conferences; except with pool-play stages, rather than a single-elimination tournament. And the UEFA Cup is like the NIT: a consolation tournament for those who weren’t good enough to make the NCAA (again with pool-play instead of single-elimination).
Yep, that’s pretty much spot on, except it’s called the Champions League, not Champions Cup.
Now for the advanced lessons: Lesson 2 - The Intertoto Cup
(j/k, nobody understands the Intertoto Cup)
Cool. I like the comparison to the NCAA and NIT tournaments.
To truly make your comparison of the makeup (teams entered) of the Champions League and NCAA/NIT you would want to say that those team knocked out of the first round of the NCAA (at least those from major conferences) would then be seeded into the NIT.
Of course, the format of the NCAA and NIT tournaments are very different than the CL/UEFA Cup.