UEFA Champions League 1992-93
The
1992-93 season of the
UEFA Champions League football club tournament was won for the first time by
Olympique de Marseille in the final against
A.C. Milan.
It was the second to have a group stage involving the eight second round winners split into two groups, and the winner of each one met in the final. In addition, a preliminary round was required as this was the first season after the break-up of the
USSR and
Yugoslavia, resulting in a large number of new countries eligible to enter the champions of their own leagues into the competition.
However, soon after Marseille's victory allegations of
match-fixing were levelled at them and their president
Bernard Tapie. This involved a league game where Marseille, it emerged, had fixed their title-clinching
Division 1 game against
Valenciennes FC so they could concentrate on the Milan tie. It is believed that Tapie bribed Valenciennes to lose so that Marseille would win the French league earlier, giving them more time to prepare for the Champions League final. This resulted in Marseille being stripped of their league title by the
French Football Federation (although not the Champions League, as the match in question was not in that competition). They were also forcibly
relegated to the
second tier in the league, and banned from defending their title in
Europe in the
1993-94 season.
