'I wrote the Champions League anthem'

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 26 May 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 1992, European football was at a turning point. The European Cup was going to be replaced with a new format: The Champions League.

European football’s governing body, Uefa wanted a classical theme to accompany the new competition, in an attempt to try and fix the image of football which was mired by hooliganism at the time.

Tony Britten was the man tasked with writing such a piece of music. He tells Tim O’Callaghan how he did it.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more.

Recent episodes explore everything from football in Brazil, the history of the ‘Indian Titanic’ and the invention of air fryers, to Public Enemy’s Fight The Power, subway art and the political crisis in Georgia. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: visionary architect Antoni Gaudi and the design of the Sagrada Familia; Michael Jordan and his bespoke Nike trainers; Princess Diana at the Taj Mahal; and Görel Hanser, manager of legendary Swedish pop band Abba on the influence they’ve had on the music industry. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the time an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at the President of the United States in protest of America’s occupation of Iraq; the creation of the Hollywood commercial that changed advertising forever; and the ascent of the first Aboriginal MP.

(Photo: Tony in his studio. Credit: Mark Fawcet)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Before you listen to this BBC podcast, I'd like to introduce myself. My name's Stevie Middleton and I'm a BBC Commissioner for a load of sport podcasts. I'm lucky to do that at the BBC because I get to work with leading journalists, experienced pundits and the biggest sports stars. Together we bring you untold stories and fascinating insights straight from the player's mouths. But the best thing about doing this at the BBC
0:21.5	is our unique access to the sporting world.
0:24.7	What that means is that we can bring you podcasts
0:27.1	that create a real connection to dedicated sports fans
0:30.0	across the UK.
0:31.3	So if you like this podcast,
0:32.9	head over to BBC Sounds where you'll find plenty more.
0:47.0	Hello, you're listening to the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service with me, Tim O'Callaghan.
0:53.1	New episodes are released every weekday, so if you like what you hear, please subscribe and turn on your push notifications so you know when new episodes have been released.
0:57.4	In 1992, one of football's biggest competitions was looking for a revamp.
1:02.3	It was out with the old European Cup and in with the new shiny Champions League.
1:07.5	European football's governing body, UEFA, wanted an anthem to accompany the new competition,
1:13.3	and for that they needed a composer, and they turned to a man from the UK called Tony Britain.
1:19.4	I was approached to write this new music for the Champions League. Sometimes I think in the spring of
1:25.1	1992, I was doing lots and lots of commercials at time,
1:30.0	jingles, as they call them, and I had an agent who looked after that side of things for me,
1:34.9	and she was approached about this competition which we really didn't know anything about.
1:40.1	All I knew was that it was to replace what was the old European Cup,
1:44.1	and they wanted something
1:46.2	different. And UEFA, to their credit, had wanted to do something really significant about
1:53.6	the level of the way the game was being conducted, because there was a lot of hooliganism,
2:00.2	bad behaviour, right across Europe, not just in the UK.
	...

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