By Tony Attwood
- In football, the world has turned in England’s favour, as Arsenal top the Champions League
- Arsenal’s return to the Champions League, with finishing top of the league the aim
So the excitement has died down a bit, we’ve slightly caught up on sleep, and upon awakening we find that yes, Premier League teams occupy five of the the top eight places in the Champions League, and so have automatically gone through to the final stages.
Better still for us, Arsenal, through being top, not only miss the play off round, but also get the bonus of playing the second leg of each of their games up to and including the semi-final, at home. Not a gigantic advantage but a good one to have since at that point each club knows exactly what they need to do to go through each found, and can execute whatever modifications they have to the master plan in the matches at home.
But domination by one country is clearly not what Uefa had in mind when it introduced Champions League format. The eight teams that avoid the next round were meant to represent the elite of Europe, not contain five clubs from the Premier League.
But Uefa might be reluctant to change the rules yet again for next year, for having reached the top of the tree English clubs are keen to promote the idea that the Champions League really does incorporate the best teams in Europe – and not constantly incorporate the same two top teams from one country as we have with the constant appearance of Real Madrid and Barcelona – and more recently the dominance of Manchester City.
And what has caused the excitement is that the Premier League has suggested it has a way to stop teams buying their way to success, spurred on by the notion that Manchester C had become the Real Madrid of England, searching for the best players and then simply buying them, no matter the cost. It works for those who can do it, but reduces interest among supporters of all the other clubs.
In the last eight years only two teams have won the Premier League, which is annoying for the League which had proudly promoted itself as being not like Spain, Germany and of late, France. And in England the authorities have mounted a challenge the financial model used by the winners, suggesting it breaks the PL rules, as Manchester City has found out. Hence it is has a multitude of lawyers facing the PL with neither side making much progress in public against the other.
Indeed the dominance of the Premier League by Manchester City was a total embarrassment for the Premier League. And the dominance of the Champions League by English clubs has now become an embarrassment for Uefa.
The solution for the Premier League has been to devise rules that will stop ManC from using untold wealth that will allow them to see off any legal challenge and win the league every season. The solution for the Champions League is the same – although their targets are more varied. Manchester City, Paris St Germain and Real Madrid, are all been in their sights.
Since 2014/15, only in three seasons have Real Madrid and Barcelona not occupied the top two places, and on each occasion the outsider was Atlético Madrid. Which is great fun for those clubs, but not for everyone. Similar scenarios can be found in Germany and France. England however remained attractive because it had a variety of winners, until 2016/17 when ManC started to win all the time.
Uefa may hate interfering, and may like the money that certain big clubs pour into its coffers, but it knows that fans beyond the big four of Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester City and PSG have had enough. Hence the tinkering with the rules.
Spain with its winning duopoly and France and England with their winning monopoly have until recently never shown any interest in stopping the giants, but now it seems that they may not be so inclined to lay back and let the same teams win over and over. Hence the legal challenge to the finances of ManC.
The Premier League’s dominance of the automatic qualifiers list in the Champions League is just one change that arises from the shuffling of the cards by Uefa and the words of warning being expressed by the clubs fighting ManC. A competition is not interesting if one or two clubs with all the money wins all the time. Spain and France might have put up with it, but England it seems is less pliable and is not going to play that game.
There will of course always be rich and poor clubs – but richness can be taken too far. The playing field is not being made completely flat and balanced , but it is starting to be a lot more even than it used to be..
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