The EPL’s demise in Europe is vastly overstated
by Mark Finlay, London
Following Manchester City’s 1-0 loss to Barcelona at the Nou camp on Wednesday night the English Premier League has no team involved in the quarter finals of the competition for the second time in three years after Arsenal, Chelsea and now Manchester City all got knocked out at the last-16 stage.
This brings up the question of why all of a sudden English teams are struggling against continental competition, when just six-years ago the Premiership provided three of the semi-finalists for the third season in a row.
It could be that it is just a cycle, or it could in fact have deeper fundamental problems than we realize.
Many people will tell you that it is because unlike Germany and Spain who have dominated the Champions League for the past few years, the Premiership does not have a winter break that allows the players to rest up and spend time with their families.
In England many players face Christmas cooped up in a hotel waiting to play on Boxing Day, followed up by playing twice over the New Year, before then switching their attention from the League to the FA Cup.
Using Bundesliga side Bayern Munich as an example, the Bavarians had 41 days off starting on December 19th, while in that time Manchester City played eight matches.
Another reason could be a lack of English players in the top Premiership teams with Chelsea only having Gary Cahill and John Terry playing in their second-leg match against PSG, and Arsenal only starting their match against Monaco with one English player Danny Welbeck.
When you look at Manchester City’s squad they are perhaps the worst villain with only Joe Hart and James Milner.
Borussia Dortmund however and Bayern Munich rely heavily on home-grown talent with the Westphalia team starting 10 German players when they beat Manchester City in 2012, and with Bayern fielding six when they beat Arsenal in the same year.
As for Spain and their golden era of league football, you can more or less sum it up in two names Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo who between them have scored a massive 102 goals in Champions League play over the past five years.
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The truth however is that it is like everything else in life, just a cycle that currently sees the two Premiership sides with the most European honours involved in a rebuilding process.
Reds manager Brendan Rodgers is putting together a Liverpool team that in a couple of years’ time will be competing with the best of Europe as will Manchester United whose new manager Louis van Gaal will again be spending big this summer in the hope of making the Red Devils the feared opposition they once were.
Chelsea by contrast is almost there and manager Jose Mourinho has a hunger to win the Champions League with Chelsea, as it would do his ego no harm to be the first ever manager to win the competition with three different teams.
Manchester City is still a work in progress that includes more individuals than it does teammates, but should the Citizens replace Chilean manager Manuel Pellegrini with a trainer such as Diego Simeone you would see a different team from week one as City certainly has the players. They just need to know how to play for each other rather than for themselves.
To sum it up there are a handful of teams who can win the Champions League right now, and it will probably remain the same next season also, with Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain and perhaps Atletico Madrid all being in contention as they are now.
It is funny how soon people forget that English clubs ruled Europe between 2007 and 2009 with nine of the twelve teams in the Champions League semi-finals coming from the Premiership.
Next season Chelsea will have a chance and possibly Arsenal if they buy right in the summer, but it will not be long before Manchester United and Liverpool are back up there as well.
