UEFA Euro 1980

The 1980 UEFA European Football Championship final tournament was held in Italy. This was the sixth European Football Championship, which is held every four years and endorsed by UEFA. With eight teams competing, the final tournament took place between 11 and 22 June 1980. Previously, the final tournament of the European Championships were played among four teams. Champions were West Germany who won their second title. It was the last Euro tournament with a competition for third place.

Overview

This was the first European Championship in which eight teams, rather than four, contested the final tournament. On October 17, 1977 UEFA announced that England, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland and West Germany had expressed interest in hosting this event. On October 19 UEFA's Organizing Committee decided to assign the hosting to England or Italy (expressing its favour to the latter, the former having already hosted the FIFA World Cup just 11 years earlier), and on November 12 the Organizing Committee and the Executive Committee announced that Italy had been chosen unanimously. Seven countries had to qualify for the final tournament, and the draw for the qualifying round took place in Rome on November 30, 1977. Also for the first time, the hosts, in this case Italy, qualified automatically for the finals.

West Germany

West Germany is the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG (German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland or BRD) in the period between its creation on 23 May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990. This period is referred to as the Bonn Republic (German: Bonner Republik) by academic historians, an earlier term being the Bonn State (German: Bonner Staat).

During this period NATO-aligned West Germany and Warsaw Pact-aligned East Germany were divided by the Inner German border. After 1961, West Berlin was physically separated from East Berlin as well as from East Germany by the Berlin Wall. This situation ended when East Germany was dissolved and its five states joined the ten states of the Federal Republic of Germany along with the reunified city-state of Berlin. With the reunification of West and East Germany, the Federal Republic of Germany, enlarged now to sixteen states, became known simply as "Germany".

The Federal Republic of Germany was established from eleven states formed in the three Allied Zones of occupation held by the United States, the United Kingdom and France (the "Western Zones"). Its population grew from roughly 51 million in 1950 to more than 63 million in 1990. The city of Bonn was its de facto capital city (Berlin was symbolically named the de jure capital city in the West German Basic Law). The fourth Allied occupation zone (the East Zone, or Ostzone) was held by the Soviet Union. The parts of this zone lying east of the Oder-Neisse were in fact annexed by the Soviet Union and communist Poland; the remaining central part around Berlin became the communist German Democratic Republic (abbreviated GDR; in German Deutsche Demokratische Republik or DDR) with its de facto capital in East Berlin. As a result, West Germany had a territory about half the size of the interbellum democratic Weimar Republic.

1980

1980 (MCMLXXX) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (dominical letter FE) of the Gregorian calendar, the 1980th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 980th year of the 2nd millennium, the 80th year of the 20th century, and the 1st year of the 1980s decade.

Events

January