Anthem
The
UEFA Champions League anthem, officially titled simply as "Champions
League", was written by Tony Britten, and is an adaptation of George
Frideric Handel's Zadok the Priest (one of his Coronation
Anthems). UEFA commissioned Britten in 1992 to arrange an anthem, and
the piece was performed by London's Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and
sung by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. UEFA’s official website states, “the anthem is now almost as iconic as the trophy.”
The
chorus contains the three official languages used by UEFA: English,
German, and French.The climactic moment is set to the exclamations ‘Die
Meister! Die Besten! Les Grandes Équipes! The Champions!’.
The anthem's chorus is played before each UEFA Champions League game as
the two teams are lined up, as well as at the beginning and end of
television broadcasts of the matches. In addition to the anthem, there
is also entrance music, which contains parts of the anthem itself, which
is played as teams enter the field. The complete anthem is about three
minutes long, and has two short verses and the chorus.
Special vocal versions have been performed live at the Champions League Final with lyrics in other languages, changing over to the host nation's language for the chorus. These versions were performed by Andrea Bocelli (Italian) (Rome 2009, Milan 2016 and Cardiff 2017), Juan Diego Flores (Spanish) (Madrid 2010), All Angels (Wembley 2011), Jonas Kaufmann and David Garrett (Munich 2012), and Mariza (Lisbon 2014). In the 2013 final at Wembley Stadium, the chorus was played twice. In Kiev 2018, the instrumental version of the chorus was played by 2Cellos. The anthem has been released commercially in its original version on iTunes and Spotify with the title of Champions League Theme. In 2018, composer Hans Zimmer remixed the anthem with rapper Vince Staples for EA Sports’ FIFA video game FIFA 19, with it also featuring in the game’s reveal trailer.
