Forget domination of Europe - English clubs face a bleak Champions League future
WhenManchester Cityfinally conquered Europe, they were barely in Europe. Now, for a rather different reason, they might not be next season.
City's long-awaited Champions League triumph, in 2023, came in Istanbul's Ataturk Stadium, a few miles from Asia. Now they are in their 16th consecutiveChampions Leaguecampaign.
It threatens to be their last for a while, given the potential punishments after being found guilty of a century and more of charges levelled by thePremier League. If an era ends for City, the sense may be that apocalyptic predictions of two other ages never came true.
City did not dominate Europe, which some suggested was inevitable: a constant presence in the Champions League knockout stages, they won the competition once and reached one more final. And the notion that the English clubs, furnished with Premier League finances, would be unstoppable, could go with them.
They used to top UEFA 's club coefficient and stand sixth now, based more on points picked up between 2022 and 2024 than since then. Take them out and it leaves only Arsenal among the English representatives in the top seven; arguably the Gunners should be alone from the Premier League in the top tier of favourites already, alongside Paris Saint-Germain, Bayern Munich, Barcelona and Real Madrid.
But it is a sign of strength in depth that the Premier League has delivered five Champions League finalists in the last eight seasons, in Liverpool, Tottenham, Chelsea, City and Arsenal. When the same five clubs secured top-eight finishes in the league phase of the competition last season, it prompted hyperbolic rhetoric about English dominance.
Come the quarter-finals, however, and only Arsenal and Liverpool remained, and the latter were emphatically dispatched from the competition by PSG. Arsenal fell short of Champions League success in May(PA) And in this hypothetical - but very feasible - scenario of a Champions League without City, where does the English challenge come from?
Arsenal, obviously; whether or not Mikel Arteta's side take the final step by winning the competition, it is easy to envisage them in the business end of it on multiple occasions. Liverpool, maybe: they have come first and third in the league phase in successive seasons and only exited to Paris Saint-Germain in each; yet a team in transition feel far from the redoubtable outfitwho powered to three finals under Jurgen Klopp.
The standard at many of the moneyed clubs has dropped. In the last 13 years, Manchester United have often struggled to qualify for the Champions League and, already, look unlikely to be in it next year.