IF THERE IS one obsession that binds Europe together it is football. The continent’s annual pan-European knockout club competitions, the UEFA Champions League and Europa League, have produced winners from far and wide. Over the past 20 years, teams from eight different countries have carried a trophy home. But in recent years English teams have been the top dogs. In 2019 Premier League clubs took up all four slots in the Champions League and Europa League finals, the first time one league had monopolised both finals.
This year they have been dominant once again, securing three of the four final berths, another rare feat. In the Europa League final on May 26th, Manchester United narrowly lost to Spain’s Villarreal in a penalty shoot-out. But whatever happens in the Champions League final between Chelsea and Manchester City on May 29th, the silverware will be paraded aloft in England. According to ClubElo.com, a website that ranks European clubs according to their results, England’s strength is not confined to these three teams. Of Europe’s 25 best club teams, nine are English, and the average team in the Premier League is now much better than the average team in the continent’s other top leagues (see chart).
It might seem obvious that English teams should rule the roost. After all, the Premier League is the richest division of all. Deloitte, a consultancy, reckons that its clubs earned revenues of €5.9bn ($7.2bn) in the 2018-19 season, far more than the €3.4bn for La Liga in Spain and €3.3bn for the Bundesliga in Germany, the next-richest rivals. That is largely thanks to decades of English teams aggressively marketing themselves overseas, which created a vast global fan base and lucrative broadcast contracts. But after a brief spell of success in the early 2000s, England’s rich clubs struggled in European competitions. In the decade to 2018 they managed just one Champions League title between them (Chelsea in 2012). In four seasons no Premier League club made it past the quarter-finals of the competition. As a result, the Premier League’s average rating on ClubElo plummeted.
An important reason for this underperformance was poor recruitment. Until recently, English clubs tended to splurge their revenues on signing big names from other top teams. Some turned out to be expensive flops, such as Ángel Di María (Manchester United), Fernando Torres (Chelsea) and Robinho (Manchester City). By 2019 a few Premier League teams had seen the error of their ways. Liverpool, Manchester City and Tottenham all started to buy promising young talents from small clubs, whose wage demands are lower, to nurture into stars. They were repaid handsomely by punts on Mohamed Salah, Kevin De Bruyne and Son Heung-Min, respectively.
Chelsea and Manchester United seem to have cottoned on. The squads that have fired them to their respective European finals contain many players poached from lesser foreign sides, such as Bruno Fernandes (Sporting Lisbon) and Kai Havertz (Bayer Leverkusen). And they have been bolstered by a crop of English talents from their academies. Arsenal, the remaining member of the country’s “big six”, have been left behind. After spending lots on ageing stars, they have failed to qualify for European football for the first time in 25 years. Meanwhile, Everton, Leeds United, Leicester City and West Ham United now offer stiff competition, too, after shrewdly spending their share of the Premier League’s broadcast billions.
That English clubs have generally learned to use their riches wisely may be bad news for everyone else. The big six already hold great commercial clout, making up half of the 12 European teams that proposed a breakaway Super League. The cartel fell apart after uproar from fans caused the English members to get cold feet. If those clubs continue to dominate on the field as well as off it, other European teams will have less bargaining power in future negotiations about the structure of European football.
By The Economist
