No German team made the European club championship's final four from 2003 to 2008.
As founder members of the European club, they have had plenty of practice in the chair.
In turn the European club will help Ittihad develop its facilities and coaching, and provide modern equipment.
The Centre Party, which in 1994 led the campaign against joining the European club, is fiercely against both.
But public opinion in the north now overwhelmingly favours joining the European club.
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Last month, both Manchester teams got bounced from the European club championship.
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As a founder member of the European club in 1957, remember, Italy was neurotically anxious to join the European monetary system when it was set up in 1979.
Among the delegates are Uefa chief executive David Taylor, and German football legend Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, of the European Club Association - representing 144 major football clubs from across Europe.
But the Czechs also have goalkeeper Petr Cech, the Chelsea standout who was last seen stuffing the German club Bayern Munich in the shootout that decided the European club championship in May.
It is the idea that Britain will anyway have to join eventually, if it is to be a proper, influential member of the European club, so it might as well jump in soon.
The prospect of many clubs losing players for up to five weeks due to next year's Nations Cup, renewed calls are expected for Caf to bring its calendar into line with the European club fixture list.
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Dmitri Trenin, a retired colonel turned pundit, says Russia should accept that its superpower days are over, and try to join countries such as Britain, France and Germany to become another big post-imperial member of the European club.
Indeed, now that the European club of nations has finally begun formal talks with Turkey, the focus may shift to the resistance among the Turks themselves to the legal, economic and cultural changes that the EU is demanding.
Meanwhile, the prospect that the European Union could start negotiating with just one (Greek) part of Cyprus to bring it into the European club, while excluding Turkey itself even from a group of second-rung applicants, has made all Turks, whether in Turkey or on Cyprus, unusually surly.
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In between, in 2009-10, Pellegrini had a crack at Real Madrid, the one European club where silverware was expected.
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But is Mr Delors nonetheless at heart a patriotic Frenchman who views the inner core as a more convenient setting for France to dominate the political proceedings, as it did in the early days of the smaller European club?
But the heart of the issue is an economic one: Why should, say, Spain's Real Madrid , the European champion club, care that its two star players, Zidane, a Frenchman, and Figo, a Portugeuse, be fit for the World Cup?
Redknapp guided Tottenham to fourth place in the Premier League last season but the club missed out on European Champions League qualification after Chelsea won the continent's premier club competition.
The most dominant European club side of recent years has been Spanish giants Barcelona, whose players make up the nucleus of an all-conquering Spain team.
But it was not the final foray into European football for the club, or Farrar Road.
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Shortly before Euro 2008, Zenit St Petersburg clinched the Uefa Cup, three years after CSKA Moscow had claimed the country's first European club trophy with victory in the same competition.
Six months before the match Sandro Rosell, who is now the president of Barcelona Football Club, the European champions, became a director of Ailanto, a sports-marketing firm in Rio de Janeiro set up shortly beforehand.
All these sides suffered from too many star players injured or jaded by the ardors of the ever-lengthening European professional club season that ended barely two weeks before the tournament began.
Two matches in the continent's leading club competition, the European Champions League, were among 380 matches in 15 different countries deemed suspicious by Europol.
Dos Santos, who made his Champions League debut last season under the departed Frank Rijkaard, can again look forward to European football as the London club have qualified for the UEFA Cup.
Let us say you are a Manchester United supporter in the summer of 1968 after your club had won the European Cup.
Mr Berlusconi is the owner of Italy's most successful club, the defending European champions, AC Milan.
Spanish politicians have as their priority working out how to remain in the club of European leaders, by appeasing the IMF and the EU, while also appeasing citizens who do not want the national disgrace of a bailout.
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The similarities between Rangers' run to this season's Uefa Cup final and the heroes of 1972 - the last time the Ibrox club appeared in a European final - are striking to say the least.
The Catalans have already won the Club World Cup, the European Supercup and the Spanish Supercup.
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