It’s a little-known fact that was probably a million miles from the thoughts of Chelsea’s players. But as they contested the Europa Conference League final against Real Betis in May 2025 – a game they would go on to win 4-1 after initially going a goal down, the Blues were on the precipice of a unique slice of continental football history.
Chelsea, on that fateful night in Poland, became the first club in history to win the five major UEFA competitions, namely:
- Champions League
- Europa League
- Europa Conference League
- Cup Winners’ Cup
- Super Cup
And, in another quirk of fate, the Londoners also helped to set another record: that is, the 2024/25 season was the first time that five different Premier League clubs got their hands on a piece of silverware.
Liverpool, of course, landed the Premier League title, while Crystal Palace and Newcastle United won the domestic cups – that is, the FA Cup and League Cup, respectively. And then, on the continent, Chelsea’s night of celebrations came a week after Tottenham had defeated Manchester United in the Europa League final.
Famous Five
This all, of course, papers over the unspoken sixth UEFA competition: the Intertoto Cup, which was taken over by UEFA in 1995 and held for the next three decades. The Intertoto Cup was open to any club that hadn’t qualified for European competition the following season in an organic way – this was continental football via the back door, and UEFA quietly shut down the Intertoto Cup in 2008.
Cup Winners’ Cup
Anyway, back to Chelsea… The Blues’ quintuple got underway as long ago as 1971, when they lifted the now defunct Cup Winners’ Cup – they repeated the feat in 1998, too. The Cup Winners’ Cup was exactly as the name suggests; a continental competition for clubs that won their country’s main domestic cup – in the case of English football, that’s the FA Cup.
The CWC came to an end in 1999 when UEFA decided to change the qualifying criteria for the Champions League and Europa League, meaning that – in many cases – domestic cup winners would secure a place in either one of those competitions instead. Chelsea would only have to wait a handful of months before lifting their second UEFA sanctioned trophy.
Super Cup
Having won the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1998, the Blues secured entry into the Super Cup game – back then, the CWC victor would play the Champions League winner in the one-off showpiece, rather than the UEFA Cup/Europa League champion.
And so, on August 28, 1998, Chelsea found themselves taking on the Galacticos of Real Madrid at the Stade Louis II in Monaco. Marking the first time that the UEFA Super Cup was played as a single game, rather than a two-legged affair, the Blues triumphed thanks to a late Gus Poyet goal. And then, well, more than a decade would pass until Chelsea – powered by the bottomless pockets of former owner Roman Abramovich – became a true powerhouse of European football.
The 2011/12 campaign was a bonkers one for the club. After a bright enough start to the season, the Blues won just two Premier League games from mid-December to mid-February. They sunk as low as fifth in the table, so Andre Villas-Boas was sacked and club legend Roberto Di Matteo replaced him as caretaker, guiding Chelsea to… a sixth-place finish.
Champions League
And yet, despite all that, the Londoners were buzzing in the cup competitions. They would win the FA Cup, beating Liverpool 2-1 in the final, before – somehow – battling past Napoli, Benfica and Barcelona to reach the final of the Champions League.
A cagey final against Bayern Munich – played at their Allianz Arena home, no less, saw Chelsea upset the odds by first taking the tie to extra time and then penalties… where Petr Cech would heroically save two spot kicks to guide the Blues to their first-ever triumph in the European Cup or Champions League.
Europa League
The following season, Chelsea were hopeless in the Champions League – finishing third in their group behind Juventus and Shakhtar Donetsk. Di Matteo was sacked and the Blues forced to suffer the indignity of playing in the Europa League as a ‘lucky loser’.
Europa Conference League
They would, at least, make it count. With Rafa Benitez steadying the ship, Chelsea breezed past Sparta Prague and Steaua Bucharest, before Russian outfit Rubin Kazan made a nuisance of themselves in the quarter-finals – the Blues eventually sealing a 5-4 aggregate victory.
A 5-2 win over Basel in the semis set up a final against Benfica, where an injury time winner from Branislav Ivanovic was enough to cap a 2-1 win and secure a second continental trophy for Chelsea in as many years. More than a decade passed until the Blues would have their moment in the Europa Conference League and complete the quintuple…
Clubs That Have Won Four UEFA Competitions
So who will be next to join Chelsea in this unique club of European glory? A quartet of clubs have won four UEFA trophies – the Champions League, Europa League, Cup Winners’ Cup and Super Cup.
In theory, you could argue that of them, Manchester United are the most likely to complete the quintet next. That’s because the only title missing from the collection is the Europa Conference League, but it’s unlikely that Bayern, Juventus and Ajax – the other members of the four-trophy club – will end up in that competition any time soon based upon their domestic success.
Manchester United Up Next?
A set of scenarios could unfold that would enable Man Utd to qualify for the Europa Conference League; finishing seventh in the Premier League or winning the League Cup. Whether either of those outcomes is plausible, given the club’s current failings, remains to be seen, but even so they are probably more likely to win the Conference League than Bayern, Juventus or Ajax, who generally have bigger fish to fry on the continent.
During the 2024/25 season, there was actually a sequence of events that could have seen the team that finished eighth in the Premier League secure qualification to the Conference League… so Manchester United are, believe it or not, the next most likely members of the UEFA quintuple club.
