Brilliant Premier League, but at what cost to the rest of football?

Rozay

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With all the money over here, and even the Super powers from abroad unable to compete financially, the best players will invariably end up in our league. Is the rest of Europe become some sort of wasteland? In the CL now, our 3rd, 4th or 5th best team could probably beat almost anyone on the continent. In the EL, no country’s 3rd to 6th best stand a chance against an equivalent from England. We’re on the brink of our second all English CL final and EL final in 3 years.

Ultimately, is this level of PL strength good for football as a whole? Do we want a situation where there isn’t much left outside? Inter won their league with PL cast offs. Great clubs like Juve and the Spanish ones are skint and can’t compete. Will the whole point or prestige of European football become lessened if the only teams that can really challenge you are from within your own league?

Some may feel ‘feck them, this is great’ - but if nobody else has any money outside of the PL, then the PL in itself basically becomes the Champions League. There’s more value in winning it than the CL. The team 6th in our league could win that. Real and Atletico, who are fighting it out for La Liga were both easily disposed of by Chelsea, a team that hasn’t been in the PL title race all season.

I know it’s early days yet in any longer term prediction, but I’m just looking at the financial forecasts more than anything. The situation won’t change, and as the league’s decline, they will just lose sponsorship money. I wouldn’t be surprised if West Ham make the top 4 or top 6, go out and spend big money, then start slapping top teams about in Europe next season themselves.
 

VorZakone

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The PL's financial might is indeed starting to show returns. Interesting trend...
 

Dave Smith

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With all the money over here, and even the Super powers from abroad unable to compete financially, the best players will invariably end up in our league. Is the rest of Europe become some sort of wasteland? In the CL now, our 3rd, 4th or 5th best team could probably beat almost anyone on the continent. In the EL, no country’s 3rd to 6th best stand a chance against an equivalent from England. We’re on the brink of our second all English CL final and EL final in 3 years.

Ultimately, is this level of PL strength good for football as a whole? Do we want a situation where there isn’t much left outside? Inter won their league with PL cast offs. Great clubs like Juve and the Spanish ones are skint and can’t compete. Will the whole point or prestige of European football become lessened if the only teams that can really challenge you are from within your own league?

Some may feel ‘feck them, this is great’ - but if nobody else has any money outside of the PL, then the PL in itself basically becomes the Champions League. There’s more value in winning it than the CL. The team 6th in our league could win that. Real and Atletico, who are fighting it out for La Liga were both easily disposed of by Chelsea, a team that hasn’t been in the PL title race all season.

I know it’s early days yet in any longer term prediction, but I’m just looking at the financial forecasts more than anything. The situation won’t change, and as the league’s decline, they will just lose sponsorship money. I wouldn’t be surprised if West Ham make the top 4 or top 6, go out and spend big money, then start slapping top teams about in Europe next season themselves.
I say feck them. A large part of the reason for this is owing to the 'big' clubs in the other top leagues hoovering up all the domestic rights money for themselves and beggering the rest of their leagues. If they had spread it out a bit more then maybe they would've had leagues like the PL where teams actually have a bit of a chance rather than act like Marcellus Wallace when Z comes to town.
 

Stacks

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With all the money over here, and even the Super powers from abroad unable to compete financially, the best players will invariably end up in our league. Is the rest of Europe become some sort of wasteland? In the CL now, our 3rd, 4th or 5th best team could probably beat almost anyone on the continent. In the EL, no country’s 3rd to 6th best stand a chance against an equivalent from England. We’re on the brink of our second all English CL final and EL final in 3 years.

Ultimately, is this level of PL strength good for football as a whole? Do we want a situation where there isn’t much left outside? Inter won their league with PL cast offs. Great clubs like Juve and the Spanish ones are skint and can’t compete. Will the whole point or prestige of European football become lessened if the only teams that can really challenge you are from within your own league?

Some may feel ‘feck them, this is great’ - but if nobody else has any money outside of the PL, then the PL in itself basically becomes the Champions League. There’s more value in winning it than the CL. The team 6th in our league could win that. Real and Atletico, who are fighting it out for La Liga were both easily disposed of by Chelsea, a team that hasn’t been in the PL title race all season.

I know it’s early days yet in any longer term prediction, but I’m just looking at the financial forecasts more than anything. The situation won’t change, and as the league’s decline, they will just lose sponsorship money. I wouldn’t be surprised if West Ham make the top 4 or top 6, go out and spend big money, then start slapping top teams about in Europe next season themselves.
If Barca and Real want to redistribute their TV renenue then La Liga may get more competitive teams up and down the league. Also last season British teams did not fare too well in Europe and we have many of these false dawns where we supposedly entering a "new era" of English dominance only to dissipate the next season. I'll wait and see
 

Gehrman

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I say feck them. A large part of the reason for this is owing to the 'big' clubs in the other top leagues hoovering up all the domestic rights money for themselves and beggering the rest of their leagues. If they had spread it out a bit more then maybe they would've had leagues like the PL where teams actually have a bit of a chance rather than act like Marcellus Wallace when Z comes to town.
I kind of agree with this. If they had a equal distribution of TV income for the league then it would already have been much fair and competive to begin with.
 

Green_Red

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Football is cyclical. Plenty on here with longer memories will remember a time when Italian teams dominated in Europe. The Spanish clubs are just teams in transition. English teams "dominating" (which they aren't by the way) won't last forever, they are just in the upward trajectory of their cycle.
 

amolbhatia50k

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La Liga was the best League in the world this past decade but yes things have changed. I do wonder why the other leagues can't market themselves better. It's 2021 and I just find La Liga's packaging very mediocre. They don't even make an effort to play at convenient times across Asia which hurts them big time. The discussion panels etc aren't really there or are shit. Bundesliga and Serie A I understand as their product is weaker but La Liga barring a blip has a brilliant product.
 

hasanejaz88

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With all the money over here, and even the Super powers from abroad unable to compete financially, the best players will invariably end up in our league. Is the rest of Europe become some sort of wasteland? In the CL now, our 3rd, 4th or 5th best team could probably beat almost anyone on the continent. In the EL, no country’s 3rd to 6th best stand a chance against an equivalent from England. We’re on the brink of our second all English CL final and EL final in 3 years.

Ultimately, is this level of PL strength good for football as a whole? Do we want a situation where there isn’t much left outside? Inter won their league with PL cast offs. Great clubs like Juve and the Spanish ones are skint and can’t compete. Will the whole point or prestige of European football become lessened if the only teams that can really challenge you are from within your own league?

Some may feel ‘feck them, this is great’ - but if nobody else has any money outside of the PL, then the PL in itself basically becomes the Champions League. There’s more value in winning it than the CL. The team 6th in our league could win that. Real and Atletico, who are fighting it out for La Liga were both easily disposed of by Chelsea, a team that hasn’t been in the PL title race all season.

I know it’s early days yet in any longer term prediction, but I’m just looking at the financial forecasts more than anything. The situation won’t change, and as the league’s decline, they will just lose sponsorship money. I wouldn’t be surprised if West Ham make the top 4 or top 6, go out and spend big money, then start slapping top teams about in Europe next season themselves.
Had it not been for Ovrebo in 2009, the EPL would've had two consecutive all English finals, so what we're seeing is no different to the late 00's when the EPL was dominating the UCL. I would argue the domination was even more because only EPL teams were knocking out other EPL teams, it was clear that the top 4 in England were the top 4 in Europe. Can't say the same now, Bayern are still part of the top 2 clubs in Europe and had it not been for an injury crises they would've gone through against PSG and put up a great fight with City. They are better than the rest of the English clubs as well, Dortmund were also on the brink of knocking out City if not for poor refereeing decisions against them.

It's naive to think that this will continue longer, we all know football runs in cycles.The 2010's was dominated by Spanish teams reaching final after final and winning most of them, at a time when EPL clubs were far behind their European giant counterparts. Madrid looked poor in the mid 00's when they had I think 6 consecutive Round of 16 exits in the UCL, they bought Ronaldo and then everything changed. Barca were similarly poor in the early 00's before Ronaldinho came in for them. Both clubs still have the greatest pull in Europe with it comes to foreign players and they can easily recover with some more estute signings (Laporta was responsible for Barca's rise and he's back at the helm).

I think the bigger topic of discussion is whether English football should be happy with this because of what happened with the Super League. The domination is from the money thrown by rich owners, who now everyone wants to get kicked out. Kicking out the owners will ofcourse come at the cost of a lack of investment in the team and the subsequent decline in overall quality, would EPL fans be willing to sacrifice success for more ownership of their clubs?

As a Bundesliga supporter, I would never want the league to sell their soul to the devil and allow clubs to be bought out by rich owners, even if it means that they can be more competitive in Europe. The league will still develop great young players who will eventually move to bigger teams abroad, but that's fine as long as the league still remains for the fans by the fans.
 

Sarni

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La Liga was the best League in the world this past decade but yes things have changed. I do wonder why the other leagues can't market themselves better. It's 2021 and I just find La Liga's packaging very mediocre. They don't even make an effort to play at convenient times across Asia which hurts them big time. The discussion panels etc aren't really there or are shit. Bundesliga and Serie A I understand as their product is weaker but La Liga barring a blip has a brilliant product.
I think language plays a bit part. Most of the world uses English as second language, especially in Asia and Europe so two of the most lucrative markets. Also TV shows/movies from US/UK tend to be the most popular worldwide so it's easier to market something that is culturally very close to that rather than closer to Latin/Spanish culture which is just less common.

The only reason why the gap is not wider is because Spanish/German clubs have been better managed and had access to a superior pool of young talent in 2010s but with English youth getting better and English clubs acquiring top quality foreign managers even that part seems to be almost gone now. Real, Barca, Bayern, Atletico, maybe Inter and Juventus will still hang around and be up there with the best but other clubs will find it increasingly difficult.
 

giorno

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I say feck them. A large part of the reason for this is owing to the 'big' clubs in the other top leagues hoovering up all the domestic rights money for themselves and beggering the rest of their leagues. If they had spread it out a bit more then maybe they would've had leagues like the PL where teams actually have a bit of a chance rather than act like Marcellus Wallace when Z comes to town.
Yeah, this is bs. PL didn't make its money by spreading the wealth around, it did it by cornering oversees market sooner and better than anyone else

La Liga/Serie A/etc wouldn't get bigger tv contracts by spreading the wealth around because the PL has those markets cornered already. La Liga has a 4 way title race right now, but even if that continued for the next decade it's unlikely it could significantly affect its TV contracts, because by this point most markets are already covered by the PL top 6.

Serie A and La Liga were comparable to the PL in the 90s/00s in terms of competition between clubs, problem is they failed to leave a significant enough mark on those big markets. Now it's unlikely they will, for the time being
 

Rozay

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Had it not been for Ovrebo in 2009, the EPL would've had two consecutive all English finals, so what we're seeing is no different to the late 00's when the EPL was dominating the UCL. I would argue the domination was even more because only EPL teams were knocking out other EPL teams, it was clear that the top 4 in England were the top 4 in Europe. Can't say the same now, Bayern are still part of the top 2 clubs in Europe and had it not been for an injury crises they would've gone through against PSG and put up a great fight with City. They are better than the rest of the English clubs as well, Dortmund were also on the brink of knocking out City if not for poor refereeing decisions against them.

It's naive to think that this will continue longer, we all know football runs in cycles.The 2010's was dominated by Spanish teams reaching final after final and winning most of them, at a time when EPL clubs were far behind their European giant counterparts. Madrid looked poor in the mid 00's when they had I think 6 consecutive Round of 16 exits in the UCL, they bought Ronaldo and then everything changed. Barca were similarly poor in the early 00's before Ronaldinho came in for them. Both clubs still have the greatest pull in Europe with it comes to foreign players and they can easily recover with some more estute signings (Laporta was responsible for Barca's rise and he's back at the helm).

I think the bigger topic of discussion is whether English football should be happy with this because of what happened with the Super League. The domination is from the money thrown by rich owners, who now everyone wants to get kicked out. Kicking out the owners will ofcourse come at the cost of a lack of investment in the team and the subsequent decline in overall quality, would EPL fans be willing to sacrifice success for more ownership of their clubs?

As a Bundesliga supporter, I would never want the league to sell their soul to the devil and allow clubs to be bought out by rich owners, even if it means that they can be more competitive in Europe. The league will still develop great young players who will eventually move to bigger teams abroad, but that's fine as long as the league still remains for the fans by the fans.
It’s not naive to think this will continue at all. All it takes is a quick glance at the money.

It’s east to say ‘it’s all cycles, English clubs have been on top before’, but it would have been stupid to rule out retaliation from abroad while they obviously still had money. That isn’t the case now. They are financially on their knees. How does this cycle get broken if they are skint?
 

Dave Smith

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Yeah, this is bs. PL didn't make its money by spreading the wealth around, it did it by cornering oversees market sooner and better than anyone else

La Liga/Serie A/etc wouldn't get bigger tv contracts by spreading the wealth around because the PL has those markets cornered already. La Liga has a 4 way title race right now, but even if that continued for the next decade it's unlikely it could significantly affect its TV contracts, because by this point most markets are already covered by the PL top 6.

Serie A and La Liga were comparable to the PL in the 90s/00s in terms of competition between clubs, problem is they failed to leave a significant enough mark on those big markets. Now it's unlikely they will, for the time being
You're forgetting they cornered the market by having a better product owing to the competitiveness of the league. People watch sport to see who will win, when it is a procession they switch off.
 

pacifictheme

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With all the money over here, and even the Super powers from abroad unable to compete financially, the best players will invariably end up in our league. Is the rest of Europe become some sort of wasteland? In the CL now, our 3rd, 4th or 5th best team could probably beat almost anyone on the continent. In the EL, no country’s 3rd to 6th best stand a chance against an equivalent from England. We’re on the brink of our second all English CL final and EL final in 3 years.

Ultimately, is this level of PL strength good for football as a whole? Do we want a situation where there isn’t much left outside? Inter won their league with PL cast offs. Great clubs like Juve and the Spanish ones are skint and can’t compete. Will the whole point or prestige of European football become lessened if the only teams that can really challenge you are from within your own league?

Some may feel ‘feck them, this is great’ - but if nobody else has any money outside of the PL, then the PL in itself basically becomes the Champions League. There’s more value in winning it than the CL. The team 6th in our league could win that. Real and Atletico, who are fighting it out for La Liga were both easily disposed of by Chelsea, a team that hasn’t been in the PL title race all season.

I know it’s early days yet in any longer term prediction, but I’m just looking at the financial forecasts more than anything. The situation won’t change, and as the league’s decline, they will just lose sponsorship money. I wouldn’t be surprised if West Ham make the top 4 or top 6, go out and spend big money, then start slapping top teams about in Europe next season themselves.
People need to start thinking more of Chelsea. They have an amazing squad and they now have a great manager. Lampard was useless.
 

Rozay

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Football is cyclical. Plenty on here with longer memories will remember a time when Italian teams dominated in Europe. The Spanish clubs are just teams in transition. English teams "dominating" (which they aren't by the way) won't last forever, they are just in the upward trajectory of their cycle.
You’re looking at football and not looking at money. The current standing isn’t owed to natural football evolution as much as it is owed to financial inevitability.

When you look at it from that perspective, where do you see the cycle ending?
 

Care_de_Bobo

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The Champions League hasn't been a real reflection of a team's true quality for a long time. Liverpool managed to win it twice and made two more finals despite not being able to win the league for 30 years.

The competition lost a lot of its prestige for me when they started letting 4 or 5 teams from one country compete. Who really wants to see City v Chelsea or Liverpool v Spurs in the final of the supposed biggest club competition in the world? I'm not saying this just because United aren't involved, I felt the same when we played Chelsea and Arsenal in the competition a decade ago.
 

Gehrman

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You’re looking at football and not looking at money. The current standing isn’t owed to natural football evolution as much as it is owed to financial inevitability.

When you look at it from that perspective, where do you see the cycle ending?
I agree, I mean look at Seria A now. No club apart from Juventus is one of the top clubs in the world and even they are becoming somewhat average. You would have thought that Seria A which was the greatest league in the 80's and 90's would bounce back, but no it hasn't really.
 

FrankDrebin

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Yet, arguably , the PL has some of the most corrupt, shittest owners in European football.

I feel so proud.
 

Bertie Wooster

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I'm not 'happy' with all English finals that don't feature United. I'd much prefer other European teams get there if it's not us. But I agree about the cyclical nature of it all.

Barcelona and Real Madrid won the CL 8 times between them recently - with two of the greatest players of all times playing in La Liga.

At the same time, La Liga has produced 10 of the last 17 EL winners - spread between Sevilla, Atletico Madrid and Valencia. With Atletico also reaching two all Spanish CL finals but losing them.

England are bound to have our eras of dominance as well. Yes, the PL money helps. But it was also there during Spain's recent era of dominance. And last year when none reached the last four. So it's still very possible for others to win it.
 

Mb194dc

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This cycle will be different, because the football bubble is bursting. How exactly that effects teams from the premier league compared to Spain, Italy, Germany etc remains to be seen. Already seeing big problems in Ligue 1 due to the TV deal collapse.
 

giorno

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You're forgetting they cornered the market by having a better product owing to the competitiveness of the league. People watch sport to see who will win, when it is a procession they switch off.
Ah yes, the PL, with its....3 different winners in 13 years....4 in 20...

Where the title race this millenium, until the city takeover, usually involved...the same 3 or 4 teams.

4 of the last 5 PL title races have been processions. By comparison 3 of the last 5 la liga title races went down to the wire

PL is where it is now because it did a much better job of marketing itself 20-25 years ago. They didn't offer a better product, they marketed it better. That there are now 5-6 teams with title aspirations as opposed to 2-3 of other leagues is a consequence of that, and it does indeed help in making it richer now, but again: it's the big clubs the bring in the money. PL just happens to have more of them than the other leagues, thanks to the work they put in decades ago
 

Matthew84!

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With all the money over here, and even the Super powers from abroad unable to compete financially, the best players will invariably end up in our league. Is the rest of Europe become some sort of wasteland? In the CL now, our 3rd, 4th or 5th best team could probably beat almost anyone on the continent. In the EL, no country’s 3rd to 6th best stand a chance against an equivalent from England. We’re on the brink of our second all English CL final and EL final in 3 years.

Ultimately, is this level of PL strength good for football as a whole? Do we want a situation where there isn’t much left outside? Inter won their league with PL cast offs. Great clubs like Juve and the Spanish ones are skint and can’t compete. Will the whole point or prestige of European football become lessened if the only teams that can really challenge you are from within your own league?

Some may feel ‘feck them, this is great’ - but if nobody else has any money outside of the PL, then the PL in itself basically becomes the Champions League. There’s more value in winning it than the CL. The team 6th in our league could win that. Real and Atletico, who are fighting it out for La Liga were both easily disposed of by Chelsea, a team that hasn’t been in the PL title race all season.

I know it’s early days yet in any longer term prediction, but I’m just looking at the financial forecasts more than anything. The situation won’t change, and as the league’s decline, they will just lose sponsorship money. I wouldn’t be surprised if West Ham make the top 4 or top 6, go out and spend big money, then start slapping top teams about in Europe next season themselves.
All this because its a man city vs Chelsea final? Get a grip, apart from Liverpool winning in Europe English clubs have been rubbish.
Is it finally the English clubs turn? Maybe but its not worth moaning about!!
The Premier league has always had cycles of being great or just plain average.
 

hasanejaz88

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It’s not naive to think this will continue at all. All it takes is a quick glance at the money.

It’s east to say ‘it’s all cycles, English clubs have been on top before’, but it would have been stupid to rule out retaliation from abroad while they obviously still had money. That isn’t the case now. They are financially on their knees. How does this cycle get broken if they are skint?
I think Barcelona were under similar financial trouble when Laporta took over in the early 00's. Again, no one is saying that they'll do this overnight and it might take a few seasons or rebuilding but Madrid and Barcelona have been the biggest clubs in Europe for decades now and have gone under similar downturn periods with financial problems.

What's different with the EPL now than compared to the mid 2010's when they were performing even worse than the Bundesliga in Europe? They had the same money then and were similarly investing heavily in their squads, the major difference between then and now is that they're actually focusing on getting the best managers in the world and not just the players. This Chelsea squad is not very different to the one that Bayern smashed last season and they were arguably playing better in the league then.

Once these managers leave, for whatever reason, we might see a similar downturn in fortune. Again, I don't think the EPL teams are miles better than their European counterparts, which wasn't the case from 2005-2009. I think only City can match Bayern right now, while United were knocked out of the group stages after losing to PSG and Leipzig and Spurs were knocked out by a Croatian team. It was only last year that only 1 English team was in the semi-final of European competitions.
 

Devil81

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Just been speaking about this very thing with my mate, ten years from now the financial muscle of the Premier league could see us light years ahead of the rest of Europe.

The signs are there already with the possibility of another clean sweep of teams in the finals of European competition. I actually think Bayern are the team capable of keeping with us at this time, the rest are in a complete financial mess and are only going to fall further behind over the next few years.
 

Matthew84!

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Just been speaking about this very thing with my mate, ten years from now the financial muscle of the Premier league could see us light years ahead of the rest of Europe.

The signs are there already with the possibility of another clean sweep of teams in the finals of European competition. I actually think Bayern are the team capable of keeping with us at this time, the rest are in a complete financial mess and are only going to fall further behind over the next few years.
Sorry but this is just complete rubbish, unless you can tell the future which if you can I apologise,
Next season no English team could make it to the final and people will moan that the English clubs are rubbish in europe.
 

JPRouve

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You're forgetting they cornered the market by having a better product owing to the competitiveness of the league. People watch sport to see who will win, when it is a procession they switch off.
If that was the case the French league would have been the most watched in the 90s when the PL gained overseas markets. The reality is that Sky are very good at what they do, they marketed the PL very well in the 90s.
 

Rozay

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England are bound to have our eras of dominance as well. Yes, the PL money helps. But it was also there during Spain's recent era of dominance. And last year when none reached the last four. So it's still very possible for others to win it.
In the years you were speaking of, the Spanish clubs were not skint. Neither were the English, but we were not the only money in town. Now we are, pretty much.

I think people shouldn’t be looking at previous cycles. Just focus on the financial standing of each league. Everytime we discuss one of our players leaving the question is always ‘but who can afford them?’. This is the point. Yes, there are cycles, but the only way that will be reversed is if financial parity exists. If not, you’re more likely to have West Ham or Wolves buying key players from Juventus than the other way round.

Almost every club in the PL can afford to buy a £30m striker. Villa survived by one point last season and bought Ollie Watkins for £33m. Sheffield paid £24m for Brewster. Palace paid £32m for Benteke. West Ham paid £45m for Haller. Brighton paid £28m for Maupay. Wolves paid £35m for a fecking 17 year old.

Probably no more than 5 clubs outside England can afford this. That’s the real cause of this cycle changing. Coaches and players will continue to come to where they are paid best, and also to the best football teams, which will be the ones with the best players and coaches.
 

Rozay

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All this because its a man city vs Chelsea final? Get a grip, apart from Liverpool winning in Europe English clubs have been rubbish.
Is it finally the English clubs turn? Maybe but its not worth moaning about!!
The Premier league has always had cycles of being great or just plain average.
Are you actually even reading or skimming?

‘I know it’s early days yet in any longer term prediction, but I’m just looking at the financial forecasts more than anything. The situation won’t change, and as the league’s decline, they will just lose sponsorship money. I wouldn’t be surprised if West Ham make the top 4 or top 6, go out and spend big money, then start slapping top teams about in Europe next season themselves.’
 

2 man midfield

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I say feck them. A large part of the reason for this is owing to the 'big' clubs in the other top leagues hoovering up all the domestic rights money for themselves and beggering the rest of their leagues. If they had spread it out a bit more then maybe they would've had leagues like the PL where teams actually have a bit of a chance rather than act like Marcellus Wallace when Z comes to town.
This. Sod Real and Barca.
 

acnumber9

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Ah yes, the PL, with its....3 different winners in 13 years....4 in 20...
Except it’s 5 different winners in 9 years and 6 in 18. It’s 37 years since La Liga had six different winners.
 

JPRouve

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In the years you were speaking of, the Spanish clubs were not skint. Neither were the English, but we were not the only money in town. Now we are, pretty much.

I think people shouldn’t be looking at previous cycles. Just focus on the financial standing of each league. Everytime we discuss one of our players leaving the question is always ‘but who can afford them?’. This is the point. Yes, there are cycles, but the only way that will be reversed is if financial parity exists. If not, you’re more likely to have West Ham or Wolves buying key players from Juventus than the other way round.

Almost every club in the PL can afford to buy a £30m striker. Villa survived by one point last season and bought Ollie Watkins for £33m. Sheffield paid £24m for Brewster. Palace paid £32m for Benteke. West Ham paid £45m for Haller. Brighton paid £28m for Maupay. Wolves paid £35m for a fecking 17 year old.

Probably no more than 5 clubs outside England can afford this. That’s the real cause of this cycle changing. Coaches and players will continue to come to where they are paid best, and also to the best football teams, which will be the ones with the best players and coaches.
A small nuance, the issue isn't with the top team, since the bosman ruling the very best players have converged toward a handful of top clubs who are also the wealthiest. The issue is when Norwich is effectively subsidized by United and can afford higher wages than Marseille despite the fact that they have a smaller following and smaller gate.
Now the fact that Maupay who was a failure in France can move for 28m isn't an issue, he lost his place to significantly cheaper players.
 

Boavista

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This is a bit of an overreaction. The Premier League has a lot of potential top teams with a lot of money, more than other leagues, so naturally you'll see them doing well more frequently. That was already the case the past decade but the Premier League underachieved in Europe relative to their means. The longterm trend might head that way, and of course that would be sad for football if other leagues can't keep up but I can't see that happening entirely. Both City and Chelsea have a lot of money and very good coaches right now, but once Guardiola leaves for instance City will have more ups and downs again.

Chelsea played Atletico and Real Madrid when the former wasn't in good form, and Real Madrid need to rejuvenate their squad. Drawing conclusions from that seems a bit too hysterical. Football is a game with fine margins, even Dortmund with an injury riddled squad and bad form could have defeated City on another day.

In any case, the past two decades have already shown that European football is dominated by a small number of elite teams, so I don't see how that changes just because the Premier League will likely have more winners in the future from now. Real Madrid and Barcelona might be in financial trouble right now, but their revenues still eclipse all other clubs. I don't think it's impossible they will get over their difficulties and rebuild great teams.

Wasn't there talk of the PL tv deal decreasing anyway? Even if it doesn't in the near future, it's not a given that PL tv money will keep growing, while other leagues' tv deals collapse. I don't think we'll see the PL dominate Europe any more than we saw the Spanish dominate it in the past. There are too many good players around for them to all join English teams, and for all the money PL teams might have, it still needs to be managed competently. Even if teams in the bottom half of the league were as rich as the top 3 in other leagues, players would still want to join successful teams eventually.
 

giorno

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Probably no more than 5 clubs outside England can afford this. That’s the real cause of this cycle changing. Coaches and players will continue to come to where they are paid best, and also to the best football teams, which will be the ones with the best players and coaches.
There are only so many of those best players and coaches though, which is why wolves and west ham aren't capable of signing juventus best players/coaches, to use your example

COVID should exacerbate the issue for the next few years, true, the top PL clubs should be able to do more than their continental competitors, but once the economy returns to normality, well, real madrid, barcelona, etc have massive worldwide fanbases, those aren't going anywhere
 

giorno

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Except it’s 5 different winners in 9 years and 6 in 18. It’s 37 years since La Liga had six different winners.
From 1992 to 2003, manchester united, blackburn and arsenal where the only clubs to win it. Then Abramovich came and it became 4. Then the City takeover made 5. With Liverpool and Leicester that's 7 different clubs who won the PL in its history

Over the same time period, Italy and Spain have had 5 each. PL didn't suddenly start producing a better product, and didn't suddenly get massive TV deals as a result of it. It's the work of decades in action, and it started back when the PL very much did not offer a better product, in fact it was worse. But they marketed it better
 

Lay

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I really want European football to be as strong as possible. Beating a shit Barcelona or whoever doesn’t feel that great
 

Rozay

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A small nuance, the issue isn't with the top team, since the bosman ruling the very best players have converged toward a handful of top clubs who are also the wealthiest. The issue is when Norwich is effectively subsidized by United and can afford higher wages than Marseille despite the fact that they have a smaller following and smaller gate.
Now the fact that Maupay who was a failure in France can move for 28m isn't an issue, he lost his place to significantly cheaper players.
Indeed, this does affect competition just as much. Not every player in France may be a target for United or Real of course. But the next layer down will be bought by smaller English clubs, which will take a lot of talent from the league. If more of that calibre of player stayed there, the league may have stronger teams and do better in Europe, improve coefficients etc. Players like Anguissa and Bissouma left France for small English clubs because they pay more. Even Kanté fits into that category, considering the Leicester that he joined. Benfica let their top striker leave on loan! Batshuayi left Marseille to be a back up player.

These players could help some of the 3rd or 4th best French teams to consolidate and become stronger, and improve the quality and competition of the league. This in turn makes PSG more likely to succeed in the CL when they play weekly in a higher standard of league. Right now their league looks ‘competitive’, but the standard is still low. PSG have come down from a standard that they should be at to make it a race in France because they are not pushed.
 

JuveGER

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In Deloitte's football money league, the top 3 in terms of revenue come from outside the Premier League, 5 out of the top 10, and 13 out of the top 20 are not from the Premier League. For the time being the biggest clubs from Spain, Germany, France and (to a lesser extent) Italy can compete in terms of revenue. But on average there will always be more Premier League teams competing at the top than from any other league given the financial might of the league, which is why it is more likely to see an all English final.

The gap gets more obvious below the top. English clubs will certainly dominate the Europa League and new Conference league.
 

thepolice123

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Are you actually even reading or skimming?

‘I know it’s early days yet in any longer term prediction, but I’m just looking at the financial forecasts more than anything. The situation won’t change, and as the league’s decline, they will just lose sponsorship money. I wouldn’t be surprised if West Ham make the top 4 or top 6, go out and spend big money, then start slapping top teams about in Europe next season themselves.’
We are hardly slapping top teams in Europe. I don't expect West Ham to be capable of it either. :lol:
 

Rozay

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There are only so many of those best players and coaches though, which is why wolves and west ham aren't capable of signing juventus best players/coaches, to use your example

COVID should exacerbate the issue for the next few years, true, the top PL clubs should be able to do more than their continental competitors, but once the economy returns to normality, well, real madrid, barcelona, etc have massive worldwide fanbases, those aren't going anywhere
That’s true, but it isn’t only the very best that matter. Teams will come and take the next best, so after Juve have taken a few of the best, the ones not quite good enough for Juve will go to West Ham. Which weakens the competition that Juve face weekly, and as a result reduces the quality of the overall product.

Part of the reason that England is competitive is because although United can’t sign everyone, as you rightly said, Marseilles or Roma can’t come and sign Sigurdsson or Neves either. So quality still remains in the league. If United took Grealish but then Roma came and took Mings and Cash and so on - the league would be weaker. Now, United will take Grealish, but McGinn is still a good player, and he is happy to stay at Villa, which means they can still beat us. It’s the McGinns and Ings’ that make the strength of the league as much as the Agueros.
 

Stacks

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Yeah, this is bs. PL didn't make its money by spreading the wealth around, it did it by cornering oversees market sooner and better than anyone else

La Liga/Serie A/etc wouldn't get bigger tv contracts by spreading the wealth around because the PL has those markets cornered already. La Liga has a 4 way title race right now, but even if that continued for the next decade it's unlikely it could significantly affect its TV contracts, because by this point most markets are already covered by the PL top 6.

Serie A and La Liga were comparable to the PL in the 90s/00s in terms of competition between clubs, problem is they failed to leave a significant enough mark on those big markets. Now it's unlikely they will, for the time being
Actually it was signing SKY TV deals firstly. Sky still show the majority of games. Overseas brings in about 4.5BN.= which is a lot but what made the EPL so attractive overseas? Maybe the competitiveness of the league? There has to be a demand for the deals to be signed. No one wants to follow La Liga the same way
 

Rozay

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In Deloitte's football money league, the top 3 in terms of revenue come from outside the Premier League, 5 out of the top 10, and 13 out of the top 20 are not from the Premier League. For the time being the biggest clubs from Spain, Germany, France and (to a lesser extent) Italy can compete in terms of revenue. But on average there will always be more Premier League teams competing at the top than from any other league given the financial might of the league, which is why it is more likely to see an all English final.

The gap gets more obvious below the top. English clubs will certainly dominate the Europa League and new Conference league.
This is a good point. I’ve always felt a better metric to see the strength of a league is in the Europa League, more than the CL. The CL is great for determining the strength of everyone’s best club. But after the best one, two or three - a lot of countries don’t have the quality to win a Europa League. I want to see how a league’s teams can compete when we start getting down to the 5th and 6th as much as just their best teams. Credit to Spain, Sevilla did it many times while their league was the best. But now West Ham are trying to buy their star striker!