- How strong is the Portuguese League that Sporting play in?
- Arsenal v Sporting 8pm Wednesday, and the problem of accumulated minutes.
By Tony Attwood
As we all know of course, there are eight clubs left in the Champions League at the start of the quarter finals and ahead of yesterday’s games which saw Liverpool and Barcelona knocked out, I wondered if I could see them in comparison in terms of where they stand in their own leagues.
It turns out that five of the eight clubs that did reach the quarter finals are currently top of their leagues as well as being in the Champions League quarters. The remaining three clubs are second, fourth and fifth in their respective leagues.
- Bayern Munich, top of the league, 12 points clear of second place
- Barcelona, Spain, top of the league, nine points clear of the second club, but now knocked out of the Champs League
- Arsenal, top of the league, six points clear of the second club
- Sporting, Portugal, top of the league, five points clear of the second club
- PSG, top of the league, four points above second place
- Real Madrid, second in the league, is nine points behind top club
- Liverpool: fifth in the league, 18 points behind the leaders and now kncoked out
- Atletico Madrid: fourth in the league, 22 points behind the leaders
So that list, which of course doesn’t take into account the draw in terms of who plays whom, shows Arsenal in third, but of course such a chart doesn’t also take into account the relative strengths of different leagues.
We could also look at how many times each club has won the Champions League.
- Real Madrid: 15-time winners
- Bayern Munich: six-time winners
- Liverpool: six-time winners
- Barcelona: five-time winners
- Paris St German: once winners
- Atletico Madrid: three-time runners-up
So this leaves Arsenal one of the two quarter-finalists never to have won the competition, the other being Sporting.
Now of course, as we have touched upon before, winning this competition is not just about being the best in Europe, but also the level of rivalry that the club has in its home league. Although Manchester City have of late been out-perofmring other clubs in the Premier League through its use of a level of sponsorship money totally out of keeping with other clubs in the league, they have only won the Champions League once, and this season, on 18 March, City they were defeated beaten 1–5 on aggregate by Real Madrid in the round of 16.
As we have been noting in previous articles, so much depends on the depth of competition in the rest of the national league for each club. And it was while contemplating this that I came across the details of the length of time some clubs have been in their domestic top division.
This is of interest this season because, as you may have noticed if you read the Arsenal History Society site, this is the 100th consecutive season that Arsenal have spent in the top division. And it was interesting to note that just three clubs have played all 95 seasons in the Spanish League, Athletic Bilbao, Barcelona, Real Madrid – all of course behind Arsenal.
Of course, we can’t do a comparison for all the other leagues, as many have been reformed over the years. The German league, for example (the Bundesliga,) was not set up in its current format until 1963. The French league goes back to 1932.
The Scottish Football League was created in 1890 and the first season was played with 11 clubs because St Bernard’s, who applied to be part of the competition, were not allowed in. No formal reasons have been given for them being kicked out before the league even started, but it was possibly because they were in Edinburgh and most of the others were around the Glasgow area. So that counts as the longest-running national league, I guess, unless anyone has any other information.
More on tonight’s game, later.
