Is The Balance Of Power Shifting Back Towards Europe?

It is always inter­est­ing to see which nations dom­i­nate the Cham­pi­ons League because as sure as the sky is blue there will always be one coun­try that stands out from the rest. When I got into foot­ball it was Spain and Italy with Eng­lish sides nowhere near a place in the semi-final, let alone win­ning the Euro­pean Cup.

How­ever, time has moved on and so has the bal­ance of power, which is now so much in favour of the Pre­mier League sides that the Cham­pi­ons League may have become a lit­tle pre­dictable. Eng­lish sides no longer fear any­one, expect Barcelona, and will nor­mally go into any Euro­pean clash as the favourites. The last five finals have been con­tested by at least one Eng­lish side, much to the dis­gust of Michel Platini.

Eng­land has dom­i­nated the Cham­pi­ons League for the last five years but next year could be dif­fer­ent. With­out going too much off track the rise in value of the Euro and the increase in tax in the UK has meant Eng­lish foot­ball is no longer so attrac­tive. It seems like now is the time for Barcelona and Real Madrid to begin dom­i­nat­ing the Euro­pean scene once again.

New Real pres­i­dent Flo­rentino Perez has cer­tainly come in and shaken things up with his 300million Euros to spend and seems to have swung the bal­ance of power away from Eng­land. Now you have play­ers like David Villa and Franck Ribery no longer inter­ested in play­ing in the Pre­mier League. Instead every­one wants to be a part of the Span­ish renais­sance which is cur­rently tak­ing place.

The Pre­mier League remains the rich­est league in the world but  is no longer flavour of the month. This will be good news for Pla­tini who has all but said he is sick of see­ing three Eng­lish sides in the semi-finals of the Cham­pi­ons League.
So could next sea­son be the birth of a new rul­ing party? Well quite pos­si­bly, although it will prob­a­bly only be Real Madrid and Barcelona fly­ing the Span­ish flag with Sevilla and Atletico Madrid still too under­funded to com­pete and truly upset the foot­ball odds. Eng­lish sides will still be very strong and I expect to see all four, if Arse­nal qual­ify, make it through the group stages. How­ever, how far they get beyond that will depend on how strong sides from other Euro­pean nations become. If AC Milan use the money they made from Kaka wisely who knows where they could fin­ish up while Inter Milan cer­tainly weren’t pushovers last season.

The Cham­pi­ons League is all about beat­ing the best sides from across Europe and while it is excit­ing to see Man­ches­ter United ver­sus Arse­nal semi-finals it just doesn’t hold the same appeal as one big side going head-to-head with another from across Europe. Let’s hope that Spain and Italy claim back some of the momen­tum from the Pre­mier League sides as we hope for another ter­rific sea­son of Cham­pi­ons League action.