The Champions League anthem, playing over the stadiums of Europe, excites and makes the hearts of football players and fans beat faster. This beautiful music energizes the tournament participants and motivates them to win. There are many versions about the origin of the anthem on various Internet resources. In some sources, authorship is attributed to Mozart, Wagner, Beethoven, but these opinions are erroneous.
The history of the UEFA Champions League anthem began in 1992, when the European Football Association commissioned Team Marketing, the tournament organizer, to create an anthem: a powerful, majestic and solemn melody capable of inspiring performance on the football field and strengthening the spirit of the players. The advertising agent of the English composer Tony Britten, who was approached by the customers, offered a variety of options to choose from. As a result, the work of George Frideric Handel "Zadok the Priest", written in 1727 in honor of the coronation of King George II of England, was taken as a basis: a solemn choral chant on a biblical theme - the accession to the throne of King Solomon and his anointing to reign as priest Zadok.
The work on the anthem lasted 6 weeks, during which Tony Britten arranged the arrangement, orchestration, and painted the choir parts. As a result, from the original work of Handel, only an ascending string phrase remains at the very beginning, where the chorus does not enter yet. All other parts of the anthem are pure Britten inspiration, bringing together chords, passages and ideas of majestic music, so he can rightfully be considered the author of the Champions League anthem.
Britten superimposed a vocal line on Handel's string arpeggio, which, although it has nothing in common with Zadok the Priest, is very characteristic of the classical composer's style. The Champions League anthem is not a direct transcription of Handel's work, but despite this, Tony Britten is often accused of plagiarism.
The anthem is sung in 3 languages: English, German and French. First, Britten sketched out the main points in his native English, then made several blocks of text so that phrases in all 3 languages sounded in each. The Champions League anthem consists of 2 verses and a refrain, and its content is quite simple, but solemn: “These are the best teams!”, “Main event!”, “Masters!”, “Champions!”. These short sentences reflect the importance of the football tournament for participants and fans.
The players accepted the anthem very quickly, as it was played before every match, including the final. And it took the fans several seasons to get used to the melody. But 20 years later, the Champions League anthem has become not only recognizable and popular: today it is an integral part and symbol of the Champions Cup competition.
