The Coupe des Clubs Champions Européens – part 2

 By Jim Hearson

• See here for part 1
• See here for previous 1to11ify entries

We’re back to 1-to-11-ify more Champions League finals now and while our starting point of 2006 may seem like only yesterday to some… yeah, it wasn’t. Sorry if that makes you feel old too. Anyway, onto some hopefully less depressing numbers with the second part of our reordering. 

2006: Barcelona 2 Arsenal 1 

After the controversy of the final entry from part one, it’d be simple to play this easy and non-controversially. But, in the words of Chris Tarrant on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?, we don’t want to give you that. 

While we will give Oleguer 2, Giovanni van Bronckhorst never wore 3 during his career and he’s not going to start here. Instead, he can have 11, as befits his marauding style, with Edmílson wearing 3, as he did for Lyon, Villarreal, Palmeiras and Brazil. Mark van Bommel and 6 were virtually inseparable for PSV and Netherlands, and while Deco never actually wore 7, you can kind of imagine him doing so at some point. 

2007: AC Milan 2 Liverpool 1 

Andrea Pirlo never wore 7 either, but again, if you saw Pirlo 7 on the back of a shirt, you wouldn’t suffer the greatest bout of cognitive dissidence. He’s wearing it in this instance, as we’re shuffling the pack elsewhere. 

Well, OK, not for Alessendro Nesta; we gave him 2 in Milan’s 2003 victory and he can keep it here. ‘What of the right-back?’, you may ask – well, given that Massimo Oddo was wearing 44, we’re giving him 4. On the other flank, Marek Jankulovski primarily wore 6 for the Czech Republic, and there’s good enough for us here. It all makes for a Uruguayan feel.

To round us off, Kaká’s usual 22 divides nicely to 11, and – somewhat ironically given the club involved – we get our first instance of Zamoranoing, with Massimo Ambrosini’s 23 easily transforming to 5. 

2008: Manchester United 1 Chelsea 1 (aet, United won 6-5 on penalties) 

Manchester United did actually line up with 1-11 during the 2007-08 season, when they paid tribute to the fallen of the Munich Disaster on its 50^th anniversary, but in that instance they started with a clean slate and gave out numbers purely based on positions. 

Carlos Tevez wore 9 on that day, and we’re going to assign that to him here. In midfield, there’s more logic to giving Michael Carrick 8 rather than 11, given his less attacking nature, it being half his usual 16 and he wore it on occasion for England. The final criterion certainly works for Paul Scholes too, but he was frequently shunted out to 11 on national duty and unfortunately, history will repeat itself here. There’s no history of Nemanja Vidić wearing 2, but that’s all we have left, so there’s not much we can do. 

2009: Barcelona 2 Manchester United 0 

We’re leaning heavily on maths rather than precedent with this one, although there is a degree of that to begin and end with. We’ll start in defence by giving Yaya Touré 2, the number he wore at his first club, Beveren. Of course, he was more synonymous with 24 or 42 and you don’t need a calculator to work out what those are both divisible by. 

Moving onto multiplication, we’re giving Sylvinho 4, seeing as the square of that is his usual 16 – a number that Sergio Busquets sported for a lot of his time at Camp Nou. With a bit of Zamoranoing, we can offer him 7, and we can finish off by giving Thierry Henry 11, a number he wasn’t exactly synonymous with – despite his preference for the left of the attack – but he did sport it when he started playing for France U21s. 

2010: Bayern Munich 0 Internazionale 2 

Another José Mourninho-coached winning team, another jumble of numbers to pick through. Frustratingly, we’re well into the era where players have numbers above 11 all their career, so it’s tough to find anything remotely suitable. 

Fortunately, Esteban Cambiasso offers a chink of light – while favouring 19 for much of his club career, 5 was often his shirt for Argentina, so we’ll fit everything else around him. His Argentinian colleague Walter Samuel didn’t wear 2 as frequently for La Albiceleste, but it’s a central defender’s number in his homeland, so it works for our purposes. 

That means we’ll be giving attacking right back Maicon 7 – not ideal, but ya know… kinda like a right winger – while Cristian Chivu can have the more position-appropriate 3. Diego Milito can halve his usual 22 to 11, leaving Goran Pandev with 8. 

2011: Barcelona 3 Manchester United 1 

There are two big questions with this one – who gets 5 and who gets 11? Both Javier Mascherano and Sergio Busquets have strong claims for the former, and while the latter seems nailed on for Pedro, that would cause all kinds of madness elsewhere. In essence, this is a bodge job, so apologies up front. 

Zamoranoing Mascherano would make sense, plus he did wear 5 earlier in his career, but then Busquets is left with something not that suitable. It feels more comfortable to give 5 to the latter – his current and final Barca number – while the former can sport 4, as he already kind of is anyway. 

Then we have Pedro – a frequent wearer of 11 through his career for club and country, but do you really want Eric Abidal wearing 9 at left back? Happily, Pedro is still playing and is wearing 9 for Lazio, while Abidal did grace 11 early in his international career, plus it’s half his usual 22. 

2012: Bayern Munich 1 Chelsea 1 (aet, Chelsea won 4-3 on penalties) 

If you recall our FA Cup version of this, Chelsea’s lack of a first-teamers wearing 9 frequently caused some issues, and unsurprisingly, that’s propagated over to their first victory in the Champions League. By happy coincidence, the Blues also won the domestic knockout in 2012 too, so we’re going to lean into that for inspiration where required. Sadly, the starting XIs differed, but we can work with it. 

We gave José Bosingwa 4 that time, but David Luiz replacing Branislav Ivanovic means the Portuguese can take the more position-appropriate 2 this time. While Gary Cahill was more prone to wear 5 than 6, we gave Mikel Jon Obi the former in the FA Cup, so he can keep that now, while Cahill can Zamorano his usual 24. 

And so to the question of 9 – despite being on the right this time and theoretically more 7-appropriate – we gave Salomon Kalou 9 in the previous final, so he can keep it now, not least to prevent pushed-forward left back Ryan Bertrand wearing the unwanted digit. 

2013: Borussia Dortmund 1 Bayern Munich 2 

Once again, we’re cursed by a lack of individual precedent for this one, so rather than overthink it, let’s just keep it simple with some bread-and-butter basics, shall we? 

Once again, we’re cursed by a lack of individual precedent for this one, so rather than overthink it, let’s just keep it simple with some bread-and-butter basics, shall we? 

That means 2 for Philipp Lahm, 3 for David Alaba, 5 for Jérôme Boateng, 6 for Bastian Schweinsteiger and 11 for Thomas Müller. It’s just the three behind Mario Mandžukić that prevent us from having a perfect score, but this combination still acts as a bit of a palate-cleanser compared to some of the gymnastics we’ve had to do up to this point. 

2014: Real Madrid 4 Atlético Madrid 1 (aet) 

You didn’t think we could have a part of this without Real Madrid featuring, did you? Well yes, if you have a better memory than us, you’d remember that they won in this year, but still… 

It’s a fairly simple one this time around, although it does end up a bit wonky. To begin with, the good stuff: Luka Modrić is a shoo-in for 10, the number that he would wear to great acclaim later in his club and international career.  After that, it kinda falls away a bit, unfortunately. Dani Carvajal has to take 3 and Ángel Di María 8 – neither has a relationship with either number, but reversing the order doesn’t bear thinking about.