A History of Europe's Top 10 Teams

[Brwned]

For anyone interested in exploring the history of Europe's top 10 teams* at a glance, I built a dashboard here:

A History of Europe's Top 10 Teams (works best on PCs - see screenshots below)

Spoiler: Screenshots

It gives you a snapshot of their European Cup successes (incl. their lineups in the final), then broadens out to their best seasons (trophies / points won), and finishes with an overview of all seasons.

*based on European Cups

 

[Schneckerl]

Nice, good job.
Bayern 1974/75 finishing 10th in the league with a negative GD is a special achievment with the players they had.

 

[harms]

EC titles timeline looks a bit weird with so many years missed. Doesn't it make sense to at least prolong the graphic through the year that doesn't feature?

Nice job!

 

[Brwned]

Cheers folks!

EC titles timeline looks a bit weird with so many years missed. Doesn't it make sense to at least prolong the graphic through the year that doesn't feature?

Nice job!

That's it covered off now. The challenge with just having a blank spot in there is that the line chart represented the % of league points won by the CL winners that year, so it had to have a piece of data attached to it. Both to give a quick indicator of success on multiple fronts that season, and from a design perspective just to space things out so the CL winners weren't all on top of each other! It's a little misleading because naturally Ajax were particularly dominant at home, but at the same time it shows some interesting things - e.g. I had no idea Bayern were quite so dominant at home in their treble-winning season.

In any case, I added in the data for the other CL winners so the gaps are all filled in! Plus I've added in a drop-down menu there so you can base the line charts on the % of league points won, their league position or just evenly distributed. You'll see what I mean with the CL winners being on top of each other with them being evenly distributed!

Spoiler: Screenshots

Nice, good job.
Bayern 1974/75 finishing 10th in the league with a negative GD is a special achievment with the players they had.

Yeah pretty crazy! I think it was @Balu who said they just turned up to so many league games not arsed, and Beckenbauer in particular was a symbol of that? I suppose it's not that far off Real Madrid's collapse this season, taking into account the resource distributions across the league, but it is striking. It's not like their elite players were completely past it age-wise either - Beckenbauer and Muller were 30. From a quick glance it was the lack of goals that killed them - 57 goals, one of the few seasons they scored under 60 goals in their entire Bundesliga history, after getting 90+ goals the previous 3 seasons!

 

[Fortitude]

Great work @Brwned I shall bookmark and peruse at a later date!

 

[Eric's Seagull]

Good job.Thanks for posting

 

[Brwned]

Good job.Thanks for posting

You're very welcome!

Great work @Brwned I shall bookmark and peruse at a later date!

Enjoy!

By the way, I had a play around with a mobile version and it works alright - a little cluttered, but functional. If you click the same link on a mobile now it should open up that mobile-optimised version.

 

[Powderfinger]

After reading the Eriksen thread I can't believe Spurs didn't make the cut.

 

[Schneckerl]

Yeah pretty crazy! I think it was @Balu who said they just turned up to so many league games not arsed, and Beckenbauer in particular was a symbol of that? I suppose it's not that far off Real Madrid's collapse this season, taking into account the resource distributions across the league, but it is striking. It's not like their elite players were completely past it age-wise either - Beckenbauer and Muller were 30. From a quick glance it was the lack of goals that killed them - 57 goals, one of the few seasons they scored under 60 goals in their entire Bundesliga history, after getting 90+ goals the previous 3 seasons!

So what I heard about that season: the Bayern core players won literally every major trophy at that point (Euro in 1972, EC and WC in 1974) causing a lack of motivation, they barely had any pre season preperation after the WC win, Breitner left kind of unexpectly for Real Madrid. 1st Bundesliga matchday started with a 0:6 defeat against Offenbach. The overall squad had didn't have the depth like top teams have today and was heavily dependant on a few WC player. Müller had a goal drought at the start of the season, Beckenbauer wasn't his usual self either.
The EC win was surprising in the end, got lucky in the final vs Leeds too.

 

[Brwned]

So what I heard about that season: the Bayern core players won literally every major trophy at that point (Euro in 1972, EC and WC in 1974) causing a lack of motivation, they barely had any pre season preperation after the WC win, Breitner left kind of unexpectly for Real Madrid. 1st Bundesliga matchday started with a 0:6 defeat against Offenbach. The overall squad had didn't have the depth like top teams have today and was heavily dependant on a few WC player. Müller had a goal drought at the start of the season, Beckenbauer wasn't his usual self either.
The EC win was surprising in the end, got lucky in the final vs Leeds too.

Yeah, similar conditions to Madrid - once you reach the pinnacle the only way is down, and combined with WC exhaustion it can be a dramatic fall!

In principle everyone acknowledges the rules of thumb that post WC years do see general declines in performance*, and a loss of of hunger / motivation is inevitable after reaching such heights. But it always feels surprising when it happens! Intuitively it's hard to believe that a few more games in a season can disrupt elite athletes, and a relatively small decline in motivation can have such a big impact - I guess it's just the nature of elite sport being decided by such small margins that those few % make all the difference!

I don't remember much from that final other than it being a dull, tumescent affair! Vaguely recall thinking the Leeds midfield duo were the best players on the pitch, surprisingly.

*you've perked my interest in that idea now - I wonder if you can see obvious declines in performance following the WC, across the board. Should be able to see it in that dataset for those 10 teams!

 

[Chesterlestreet]

Looks great, @Brwned - I'll take a closer look when I get on a PC.

Thanks for the other one too (United), by the way - forgot to mention it the other day.

 

[Brwned]

*you've perked my interest in that idea now - I wonder if you can see obvious declines in performance following the WC, across the board. Should be able to see it in that dataset for those 10 teams!

@Schneckerl, turns out there's no obvious pattern there! The difference is almost non-existent at an overall level and season by season it goes in both directions. You do see consistent declines for the teams packed with WC-winning stars - Juve/Italy in '34 and '82, Bayern/Italy in '74 and '14, Barcelona/Spain in '10 - but it's not as influential as I'd thought!

Cheers @Chesterlestreet