Sextuple (association football)

The term sextuple is mainly used in the sports press for winning six important national and international titles in sport, especially in football, within one sporting year or season.

During a football season, clubs typically take part in a number of national competitions, such as in a league and one or more cup competitions, and sometimes in continental competitions. Winning multiple competitions is considered a particularly significant achievement. Doubles and triples tend to be long-remembered achievements, but they occur with a certain frequency, while winning four or more trophies in a season is much less common. In the 2010s, the terms quadruple, quintuple, and sextuple were sometimes used to refer to four, five, and six trophies in a single season.[1][2]

This list is limited to clubs that play in the top division of their league system.

Barcelona and Bayern Munich are at present the only two teams to have achieved the sextuple, accomplishing this feat in 2009 and 2020, respectively.

The six trophies won by Barcelona in 2009 on display in the Camp Nou museum.
The six trophies won by Bayern Munich in 2020 exhibited in the Allianz Arena.

Sextuple in European football

In terms of football, the sextuple means that a club has to win six official competitions in a row. The performance can be achieved through victories in the same season.[3]

The three national titles
  • winning the national championship
  • winning the national cup
  • winning the national supercup or winning the national league cup

The two international titles in Continent
  • winning the UEFA Champions League
  • winning the UEFA Super Cup

The international title worldwide
  • winning the FIFA Club World Cup

Sextuple winners
Pep Guardiola, former Barcelona manager, who achieved the first international sextuple in 2009.

2009: Spain Barcelona
Year Titles
2009 La Liga
Copa del Rey
Supercopa de España
UEFA Champions League
UEFA Super Cup
FIFA Club World Cup
Hansi Flick, former Bayern Munich manager, who achieved the second international sextuple in 2020.

2020: Germany Bayern Munich
Year Titles
2020 Bundesliga
DFB-Pokal
DFL-Supercup
UEFA Champions League
UEFA Super Cup
FIFA Club World Cup

Missed sextuples

The following teams could not win the sixth official competition after a quintuple and thus missed out on the sextuple:

Septuple

On 11 February 2021, just minutes after Bayern Munich won the FIFA Club World Cup final to secure a sextuple, former Bayern coach Pep Guardiola jokingly challenged the side to a match against previous sextuple winners Barcelona, a team that was managed by Guardiola at the time. As these two sides were the only ones to have achieved a sextuple in football history, he suggested that they could play for a seventh title.[9]

It is technically possible for certain teams to win seven trophies in a single calendar year; for example, a top-flight English club can win the standard six trophies that are of similar calibre and format to the ones achieved in previous sextuples, but can also add a seventh title by winning the EFL Cup, a secondary national cup in England which does not exist in the many other countries that have only one domestic cup competition.

Celtic were close to achieving this feat in 1967, when they added a European Cup title to their domestic quadruple consisting of the Scottish First Division, Scottish Cup, secondary Scottish League Cup and tertiary Glasgow Cup. However, there was an absence of either a Scottish[lower-alpha 1] or European Super Cup at the time,[lower-alpha 2] and Celtic's subsequent loss against Argentine side Racing Club in the 1967 Intercontinental Cup prevented them from achieving their seventh major honour within the year.[10]

See also

Notes
  1. Scotland has never organized a domestic Super cup
  2. The UEFA Super Cup's inaugural competition was in 1973.

References
  1. "On this day in 2009 - Barcelona completed the only 'sextuple' in history". 19 December 2019.
  2. "Comparing sextuples: 2009 Barça vs. 2020 Bayern".
  3. UEFA.com. "Most titles | History | UEFA Champions League". UEFA.com. Retrieved 5 September 2022.
  4. "Atletico stun Inter in Super Cup". BBC Sport. 27 August 2010.
  5. "Real Madrid beat Barcelona 1-0 to win Copa del Rey". 21 April 2011.
  6. "Watch: Borussia Dortmund win the Supercup – handing Pep Guardiola his first defeat as Bayern Munich coach".
  7. "Barcelona 1-1 Athletic Bilbao (Agg 1-5) | Spanish Super Cup report". The Guardian. 17 August 2015.
  8. "Real Madrid shocked at home by Celta Vigo in Copa del Rey quarter-final". The Guardian. 18 January 2017.
  9. "Pep Guardiola challenges Bayern Munich to sextuple showdown with Barcelona". Bundesliga. 11 February 2021. Retrieved 18 April 2021.
  10. "Celtic's 1966/67 team voted the greatest club side of the last century". 20 April 2020.
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