Thursday, July 16, 2009

UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE: DOMINANCE BY ENGLISH TEAMS?


Ever since the name was officially made the UEFA Champions League prior to the 1992 competition (formerly known as the European Cup or European Champions Cup), there have been several winners of this prestigious trophy till date with Italy’s A.C Milan and Spain’s and the overall best winners of this competition Real Madrid leading the pack with three wins apiece.

Over the last five years, however, things have changed as the competition has been dominated season after season by clubs from the English Premier League. With England at the moment having, arguably, the best League on the globe, English Club sides have been so dominant and strong especially in the past few years where three of the four clubs who played in this year’s semi-finals were from the Premiership.

Formerly, the Champions League had no clear favourites before the competition started and also it was a title all the teams could hope to lift…but not anymore. These days the UEFA Champions League title appears destined for the Premier League’s big four—Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool.

Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea’s participation in this season’s semi finals confirmed that for the fifth year in a row, a team from the English Premiership will be in the epic finals of the UEFA Champions League. (Real Madrid hasn’t made the Quarterfinals for the fifth year in a row). At least one English side has been to the final of the competition for the past four years, producing two winners in Liverpool (2005) and Manchester United in 2008. Moreover, no English side has been beaten by continental opposition, since Milan’s victory over Liverpool in the 2007 Finals in Athens.

These facts lead football enthusiasts to question whether the English Premier League is in better shape than the Serie A, La Liga, Bundesliga, Eridivise, Ligue1, and all the major leagues in Europe. Is it that there are more foreign entrepreneurs owning and investing in clubs in England? To FIFA President, Sepp Blatter, the latter is true as he and UEFA boss Michel Platini have been two of the strongest critics of the English dominance in the Champions League.

Sepp Blatter wants to impose a foreign quota system on European teams to counter the dominance of England’s Premier League teams in the Champions League. He said: “For the last two seasons, there have been three Premier League sides in the last-four of Europe's elite club competition and I fear a monopolization of football, with the richest clubs buying up the best players from all over the world at the expense of domestic talent".

The Premier League Chief Executive, Richard Scudamore, couldn’t be much happier with the recent surge of English teams in the Champions League, as he told British tabloid, The Sun, in an interview: “It’s a pity we couldn’t have had all four of our clubs in the semi-finals. The whole point of a competition is the best to come out and that’s what is happening".

Whatever the case maybe, England has the finest league in the world at the moment. Also one cannot predict whether this dominance will end anytime soon as many of the top and astute players in the world all seem to be eyeing the Premiership.

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