ZTo exonerate Mats Hummels, it should be noted that he himself played at the time. He played a central role when Borussia Dortmund reached the Champions League final on June 1, 2024. Although this game was lost against Real Madrid, that could have been the evening on which Hummels had the thought that obviously solidified itself a year later – in the final between Paris St. Germain and Inter Milan. The thought: Where are these highly praised Englishmen? Don’t they have anything better to do than allow themselves to be showered with money from dubious sources and then use all that money to miss the most important final in club football?
This week, the clever Mats Hummels stood before Dortmund’s Champions League appearance at Tottenham Hotspur as a television expert alongside the equally clever Christoph Kramer and brought the thought from back then to its conclusion. Hummels said he viewed the Premier League critically, “in terms of breadth, it is the strongest league in the world. But for the money that is available there and what is wasted at the top, it is not dominant enough.” Hummels received encouragement from neighbor Kramer, who criticized the “value for money” at Tottenham as “uniquely bad in the world”. Mats Hummels and Christoph Kramer may be among the strongest experts in the world, but these analyzes may not have been dominant enough for the specialist knowledge that is available.
After seven of eight preliminary round matchdays, the Champions League not only has a 2-0 home win for Tottenham against Dortmund on its record. The table of the new Champions League format is longer than Chile and therefore not easy to read, but at the moment it leaves little room for misinterpretation. Behind the impressive league leaders Arsenal FC, Liverpool FC, Tottenham, Newcastle United and Chelsea FC are also in the top eight; Just behind lurks the Manchester City of the currently somewhat loudly pathos Pep Guardiola, which of course remains a candidate for the top places when all qualities are combined.
In the summer of 2024, the top English clubs began to significantly change their personnel policies
Yes, tables are Snapshotsas coaches all over the world and in all languages tend to say, but one can dare to predict that the current Champions League table adequately reflects the balance of power in Europe. When trying to fathom the Premier League’s new dominance, you end up in that traumatic early summer of 2024, in which Hummels and his BVB advanced to the final. The 2023/24 season is considered a terrible year of English football: In none of the three European Cup competitions did a Premier League club make it to the final, only in the unsatisfactory Conference League did Aston Villa make it to the semi-finals (only to lose to the eventual winners Olympiacos Piraeus). In the Champions and Europa League, the semi-finals were already a Premier League-free zone.
The top English clubs have drawn a conclusion from the season in question that is now causing problems for their competitors from the continent. The English were already knocked out in March, exhausted by the high-speed competitive rhythm and a grueling title fight in which more teams than usual were involved. At that time, the top English clubs began to significantly change their personnel policy: They used their immense wealth to expand their squads in a way that only Giovanni Infantino usually does with his tournament fields. Every ambitious Premier League club now has up to two dozen world-class players – which enabled Chelsea to win the Conference League last season with a C squad. The A squad was needed for the Premier League – a logic that now even applies to Newcastle United, which has been pumped up by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund. For Newcastle, the upcoming league game against Aston Villa is more important than the easily completed Champions League game against Eindhoven.
Coaches Guardiola and Jürgen Klopp began taking their teachings and energy to a new level at the top of the Premier League a decade ago. Challenged by this, the rest of the league, using its competition-distorting television and investor billions and with clever scouting models (Brighton, Brentford), followed suit and improved the breadth of the league so spectacularly that on a good day everyone can beat everyone. In addition to the collective squad upgrades after the traumatic early summer of 2024, internal pressure has now developed in the Premier League that guarantees a consistently high level and threatens to widen the distance to the German Bundesliga. In the Bundesliga, the rich Bavarians impress as honorary Englishmen, for which they don’t even need a huge squad. Because behind them, at a considerable binocular distance, are Mats Hummels’ Dortmund team, whose ambition is to reach the Champions League year after year with predictable but expensive transfers.
Given the Bundesliga’s financial resources, that may even be honorable. But it is not the model with which Bavaria or England can be challenged.
