Why prolonged English dominance is more real now

Villarreal’s goalless draw against Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium on Thursday, which sealed a 2-1 aggregate win and a place in the Europa League final, prevented an all-English affair in both UEFA competitions for the second time in three years. Coached by former Arsenal boss Unai Emery, Villarreal will try to stop United from winning their second Europa League title in five seasons.

United, 8-5 aggregate winners against AS Roma after a 2-3 loss on Thursday, and Villarreal will meet on May 26, three days before Manchester City and Chelsea play in the final of Europe’s top competition, the Champions League.

In 2018-19, Liverpool had defeated Tottenham 2-0 in the Champions League final, days after Chelsea beat Arsenal 4-1 in the Europa League title clash.

English clubs’ dominance in Europe is not an entirely new development. When United beat Chelsea on penalties in the 2007/08 Champions League final, it was an indication of where things were heading. In three seasons between 2006/07 and 2008/09, three of the four semi-finalists in each Champions League season was an English club. Talk of a prolonged English dominance still turned out to be a bit premature – after United’s triumph, only one English club – Chelsea --- became European champions in the next 10 seasons.

In fact, at the beginning of the 2015/16 season, the Premier League was staring at the possibility of losing its fourth spot in the Champions League as England continued to lose ground in the UEFA’s club coefficient rankings. The rankings determine the allocation of spots in UEFA’s club competitions and with Germany having edged England out of the second spot and Spain occupying the top slot, Premier League clubs knew they would be reduced to three Champions League berths if Italy managed to take the third spot.

Those fears turned out to be baseless as UEFA tweaked rules a year later in order to guarantee Champions League group stage spots for the top four teams of the top four leagues. The European governing body even made sure that clubs from these countries wouldn’t have to go through the qualifiers, strengthening the positions of these four leagues in Europe. UEFA again announced reforms to the tournament last month, which will come into effect from the 2024-25. The new format will feature four more teams, 36 in total, and more games.

But here’s the catch: two of the four new slots will be “awarded to the two clubs with the highest club coefficients that have not qualified automatically for the Champions League’s league stage”. This is a big win for England’s “big 6” clubs, who will undoubtedly be in a strong position to take advantage due to their superior individual coefficient rankings, which take performances from the last five seasons into account.

UEFA, in essence, has yielded to calls for giving an even bigger share of the Champions League pie to Europe’s most powerful clubs, particularly to England’s “big 6”. These are the same clubs who had recently threatened to demolish the established European structures in order to create a closed, money-spinning Super League. If these reforms are what UEFA sees as the antithesis to the threat of the Super League, it certainly doesn’t bode well for most of Europe. It is also an indication that unlike at the end of 2007-08, the possibility of prolonged English dominance in Europe is much more real now.

But how did Europe reach here? Michel Platini, the France and Juventus great and UEFA’s former president who was banned from football in 2015 for ethics violations, had said in 2008 that English clubs’ successes were built on “an unsustainable level of debt”. High debt is an issue that plagues some of Europe’s non-English elites as well – Barcelona, for example, have accrued a reported debt of over €1 billion. But the Premier League in England is a commercial behemoth unlike any other European league today.

As lack of regulation in club ownership structures and funding have fuelled the influx of capital into the English game, the gulf between the Premier League and the rest of Europe has widened. Broadcast revenue has witnessed as meteoric rise over the years. Last season, all 20 clubs in the English top tier earned over €100 million in broadcast payments. In Spain, where broadcast revenue distribution is less equitable, only Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid crossed the €100 million figure. In France, a broadcast deal collapsed midway through the season in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, hinting at more hiccups for leagues across the continent.

The pandemic has long-term implications for all clubs across Europe – even English clubs won’t be shielded from the repercussions as Liverpool recording a pre-tax loss of over €50 million last month showed. But the English top-tier still remains better positioned in terms of continuing to generate sizable revenue despite Covid-19. It probably explains why some non-English traditional elites – Real Madrid, Barcelona Juventus, among others – are more desperate for the Super League.

These clubs are not going anywhere. Nor are the Bayern Munichs or the PSGs. But as the Premier League’s powers continue to grow, UEFA may have to do more than just appeasing the continent’s influential clubs through Champions League reforms in order to reduce the continued accumulation of wealth and power among few.

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