Another year, another Champions League without an English club in the quarterfinals. The negative tendency continues, as for the second time in the last three seasons, there isn’t even one Premier League team among the best eight squads from Europe. Liverpool couldn’t manage to pass the group stage, Chelsea was shockingly eliminated by a 10-man PSG squad, Manchester City was dominated by Barcelona and Arsenal was tactically outplayed by AS Monaco. Furthermore, even in the Europa League, English teams are underperforming – on Thursday, Everton was simply crushed by Dinamo Kiev with a 5:2 score. What happened to the mighty Premier League? Wasn’t it suppose to be the strongest domestic league in Europe?
Well, maybe once it was the strongest, but now it definitely isn’t. Yes, the competition in the Premier League is quite intense and interesting, but on the European stage, the English teams are underperforming.
Just to start, look at Manchester United. Can you even remember when was the last time they didn’t participate in the UEFA Champions League? I will be surprised if you can. In the last twenty years they have been part of the tournament, except this season of course. This shows us that the Premier League is in some kind of a transformation period. Manchester City, not United, has won the title in two of the last three seasons. That is something that hasn’t happened before.
Furthermore, in the last couple of years there have been some serious debates whether there should be a winter break in the Premier League. In my opinion – undoubtedly, yes. There is break around 30 days in Italy, France, Spain and Germany, so why isn’t there one in England? While every other team in Europe is resting, the English clubs are playing league games, which is definitely very tiring, both physically and mentally.
A lot of people have also stated that English-born players are responsible for this crisis. However, in all of the clubs that played in the Champions League this season, foreign players had dominating presence. I don’t think that the British players have anything to do with these problems.
It would be very interesting to see how English clubs will get out of the crisis and whether it will be soon.
Premier League:Why are Premier League clubs performing poorly in European competitions?
No comments:
Post a Comment