The Champions League’s existential threat is closer than you think | OneFootball

In the days before this Champions League season began, there was considerable agitation about one big topic, that may yet change its future.

The Uefa Executive Committee met on Thursday, after a lot of lobbying to allow LaLiga to play games abroad. It was ultimately decided the issue had so many potential complications it requires more discussion.

LaLiga’s fiery president Javier Tebas would instead argue it’s all very simple, and point to this Champions League week. An unprecedented six Premier League clubs are involved, showcasing the competition’s uncatchable power.

Rivals like LaLiga have to try something.

The Premier League itself, its most senior figure insists, is doing nothing on that front. Chief executive Richard Masters was asked on the eve of the season, and stressed there are no current plans to play games abroad.

The Premier League doesn’t need to, and not just because of its global supremacy. Those six clubs will form a total of nine in three European competitions this season. At almost half the Premier League, that’s more football emissaries sent out across the continent than any country has ever done before.

You won’t be able to move for English clubs, especially in the Champions League. Those six places form exactly a sixth of the 36-team field.

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Newcastle will play Champions League football this season (PA Wire)

Such proportions are not healthy for football. The Premier League and Champions League have both recently been described as alternatives to the Super League, and here we have all of that coming together for something that feels excessive. This is entirely by design.

It’s also absurd, especially at a point when so many other leagues are crying out for this kind of access, and money. You couldn’t have a better encapsulation of modern-day football. Those who need the least receive the most, with that existing wealth also ensuring that is constantly going to be the case.

Such wealth also forms one of the obvious reasons for this supremacy, just as so much of the discussion can be brought down to hard numbers.

The Premier Leagues enjoys an immense advantage in terms of broadcasting revenue - at well over £1bn more than any other league a year - so consequently enjoys immense advantage in terms of spending. English clubs pay £2.5bn more in wages than any other league, and that is almost certain to increase after another record spend of £3bn on transfer fees this summer.

That ensured two under-performing Premier League clubs still got to the Europa League final, in Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United, with victory guaranteeing an extra place in the Champions League.

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Tottenham and Manchester United met in an all-English Europa League final last season (Getty Images)

It also offered so many more individual victories that England’s coefficient was greatly improved. This brought one of the two extra “bonus” Champions League places.

Given exactly this cycle of self-perpetuation, it consequently feels highly likely that the Premier League’s vaunted “race for the top four” is going to become a top five almost every season.

And yet there are a few other numbers amidst all this, that look lean compared to such excess.

One is the number of Champions Leagues actually won in recent years, and even the number of finalists and semi-finalists.

The second Covid season of 2020-21 is seen as opening several economic fault lines in football, to form the moment the Premier League’s financial insulation allowed it to properly pull away. And yet, since then, England has only had two European champions. This is the same as Real Madrid.

Those two champions have also formed just four finalists and six semi-finalists in that same period. This is still a very strong record, and one better than any other league. But it isn’t billions of pounds better.

It’s not even 2007-08 or 2008-09, when the Premier League had three semi-finalists in both seasons, which is what you might really expect from such economic superiority.

This resilient variety should actually be reassuring for European football. The problem is that the reasons for it aren’t necessarily lasting.

Part of it is just blind luck. Liverpool came to within penalty kicks of eliminating eventual champions Paris Saint-Germain last season. Arsenal could rue a few mis-kicks in their semi-final defeat.

Part of it is the more searching question is how much effect that more money can even have after a certain point. It is at least arguable that, once you hit a certain wage bill, there are diminishing returns.

That is possibly backed by how it’s debatable that the Premier League has even technically improved over the past five years. If you’re already adding most of the best quality, what difference is a bit more going to make? Such a truth would only further emphasise the madness of the Premier League’s ever-accelerating wage race.

There’s then the contradiction of how the existence of such superiority may also undermine it. If you have six teams good enough to be in the Champions League, it indicates your own league is more demanding. The same clubs’ very participation in the competition will then considerably add to the demands of the season.

In general, English clubs do arrive at the knock-out stages more fatigued than everyone else. They have more matches, and also more intense matches. The fourth-placed club in any other league, after all, struggles to come close to the spending of Brentford - let alone Newcastle United or Tottenham.

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There will be nine English teams playing across the three top European competitions (AFP via Getty Images)

Both Newcastle and Spurs meanwhile look especially susceptible to struggling with the demands of two parallel league campaigns at once. The expanded Champions League has already taken away England’s negligible winter break, to ensure January is the busiest month in the calendar. Some continental rivals already see that as a great equaliser in this race.

And yet that also reflects why parts of this discussion have long been misplaced. Outside England, it’s now wrong to talk of the strength of individual leagues. It’s simply about the strength of individual mega clubs.

Where England has had four different semi-finalists since 2020-21, PSG have been responsible for all of France’s, Real Madrid for most of Spain’s

This has meant that, for all that the Premier League spends, the other mega clubs still have sufficient ballast to secure most of the Ballon d’Or shortlist. Even some of England’s biggest stars, such as Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane, play for those teams.

There’s then classic invention from necessity. Clubs with lesser resources have to think more, so that they can surprise Premier League teams.

Except, this still only goes so far. The brightest coaches are very quickly appointed by the Premier League, meaning that is where a lot of innovation happens. Look at how Andoni Iraola’s Bournemouth runners are rupturing the Pep Guardiola tactical hegemony.

Even 15 years ago, an Iraola might have been at Valencia or Lyon.

That’s why it feels like this very discussion is going to be on a knife edge every season. Figures like Tebas know they can’t keep depending on this combination of factors falling badly for Premier League clubs.

When you have six, it’s more likely than not that one or two of them weather these obstacles to make it further.

Consider the response to last season’s expansion. Arsenal built a huge squad to match Chelsea. Liverpool now have the most stacked front line in Europe, after signing Alexander Isak.

Not even clubs like Barcelona could find the money to match. Everyone else instead has to try something else - even on Champions League pitches.