Editing UEFA Cup Winners' Cup (section)

===Decline===
After the establishment of the UEFA Champions League (formerly called the European Champion Clubs' Cup) in the early 1990s, the standing and prestige of the Cup Winners' Cup began to decline. With the expansion of the Champions League in 1997 to allow more than one team from the highest-ranked member associations to enter, the Cup Winners' Cup began to look noticeably inferior. Many of the bigger teams who would previously have entered the Cup Winners' Cup were now gaining entry to the Champions League instead by finishing second in their domestic league – such as Cup Winners' Cup holders Barcelona in 1997–98 and [[FC Bayern Munich|Bayern Munich]] and PSV Eindhoven in 1998–99 – and this greatly weakened the Cup Winners' Cup.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/football/these-football-times/2019/apr/11/cup-winners-cup-competition-retained|title=In praise of the Cup Winners' Cup, the competition that was never retained|author=Sam Carney|work=[[The Guardian]]|date=11 April 2019|access-date=30 May 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190411175137/https://www.theguardian.com/football/these-football-times/2019/apr/11/cup-winners-cup-competition-retained|archive-date=11 April 2019|url-status=live}}</ref>

At the time of the Champions League expansion, UEFA also considered expanding the Cup Winners' Cup from 32 teams to 64 by allowing a second team to enter from many countries, although by what qualification criteria the second entrants would be determined were never settled upon – ultimately UEFA did not make any of these changes to the Cup Winners' Cup.{{cn|date=March 2025}}

By the late 1990s, the Cup Winners' Cup had come to be seen as a second-rate competition with only one or two big name teams available to enter each year and the interest in the tournament from both major clubs and the public dropped. Finally, with the further expansion of the UEFA Champions League to include as many as three or four teams from the top footballing nations, the decision was taken to abolish the competition after the end of the 1998–99 tournament and merge it into the UEFA Cup (now the [[UEFA Europa League]]). Since then, domestic cup winners who do not otherwise qualify for the Champions League are given a place in the Europa League.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.fourfourtwo.com/features/6-things-we-loved-and-miss-about-cup-winners-cup|title=6 things we loved – and miss – about the Cup Winners' Cup|author=Joe Marshall|publisher=[[FourFourTwo]]|date=22 May 2019|access-date=30 May 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190522145656/https://www.fourfourtwo.com/features/6-things-we-loved-and-miss-about-cup-winners-cup|archive-date=22 May 2019|url-status=live}}</ref>

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| [[File:Close up of the European Cup Winners' Cup trophy.JPG|thumb|left|150px|The trophy awarded to [[Sporting CP]] in 1964]]
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| [[File:Recopa de Europa Real Zaragoza.jpg|thumb|right|150px|The trophy awarded to [[Real Zaragoza|Zaragoza]] in 1995]]
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