Last year it was an aberration. All four finalists in Europe were Premier League teams. Liverpool played against Tottenham in the Champions League final and Chelsea met Arsenal in the Europa League. Before last year, only once had two Premier League teams played the Champions League final. In 2008, Manchester United beat Chelsea on penalties after John Terry slipped while taking his penalty kick during the shootout on a rain-soaked pitch in Moscow. There have never been two Premier League teams in the Europa League final.
Premier League fans are to be forgiven for feeling that English teams deserve to strive for glory in Europe every year. After all, the best coaches in the world ply their trade here, spend their other leagues handsomely on buying players and paying them mouthwatering salaries, and the stadiums are filled with rowdy fans. But this year there was no English team among the Champions League semi-finalists. Manchester City ignominiously lost to Lyon in the quarter-finals.
After beating Real Madrid in the round of 16, one could hope it was their year. Despite the billions of Abu Dhabi oil money spent on the team, European glory eludes them. The best they have done so far is the semi-final in the 2015-16 season. Pep Guardiola was named the highest paid coach in the world to help the sheikhs bask in glory, but that wasn’t the case. Having won the Champions League twice with Barcelona, they thought the Spaniard was the only one, but were once again disappointed. No Lionel Messi, no glory for him. In three years at Bayern Munich, Guardiola hasn’t even made it to the final.
In the 28 years since the creation of the Premier League from the old First Division in England, English teams have won the Champions League a total of five times: Manchester United twice, Liverpool twice and Chelsea once. The mid-2000s were the heyday of Premier League teams in European elite competition. Liverpool beat Milan in the 2004-5 miracle in Istanbul, the following year Arsenal with ten men for most of the game fought valiantly against Barcelona, the following year Milan took revenge against Liverpool, in 2007-08, three of the last four were English with Manchester United beating Barcelona on the way to the trophy, in 2008-09 again there were three English team semi-finals, but this time Barcelona had the best of Manchester United.
English teams have not reached the same heights since then. Roberto di Matteo’s Chelsea victory in 2011-12 was fortuitous. A Didier Drogba-inspired header in the closing moments of the final took the match into extra time and eventually penalties. If a Premier League team deserved to win before Liverpool last year, it was Liverpool the year before. But Real Madrid’s serial winners were too smart for European novices, so to speak. Within minutes of the start of the match in Madrid, their captain Sergio Ramos incapacitated Liverpool’s talisman Mohamed Salah and the most successful English side in Europe never recovered.
Despite all its popularity around the world, the English football brand is very different. There are a lot of puffs and puffs and players often run around like headless chickens. Players nonchalantly commit foul on opponents. Fans bray for blood and crisp tackles are acclaimed. Roman gladiators were probably equally acclaimed two millennia ago. Entertainment is in abundance. Fans would prefer their players to let off steam for the full 90 minutes rather than find inspiring moments to turn the game around. Creative players like David Silva, Kevin de Bryune and Mesut Ozil in his pomp are few and far between. Compare this to, say, a partially full Italian stadium where the game is much calmer and more tactical, opponents are given space, teams are waiting for their chances to pounce and the goals are much cleaner.
In Europe they play a different game.
