Today, A brand new addition to Footie call! A man with
a love for the game like no other. A man who KNOWS his stats, a man who has a
strange fetish for Bon Jovi…uhm… Footie nuts, I give to you Mr Themba Sweet!
So there’s a group of chaps called UEFA who basically govern professional football in Europe. They also rank the teams & leagues that play in their prestigious competitions – the greatest one being the UEFA Champions League.
This season the EPL teams did poorly in Europe which triggered off a mass social network panic/frenzy of statements about how much better La Liga is.
So to see if this is true over a longer period than a few months, I’ve gone back to 1996-97 season to see who really is dominant in Europe from then till now. The group stage is not important since UEFA decides the maximum amount of clubs these top 7 leagues are allowed to enter. So I’ve taken stats from the important QF stage onwards, from 1996 to date:
It turns out that over the past 15 seasons, the EPL has made more appearances in the Quarter-final & Semi-final with the joint amount of Final appearances in the Final. Yes Spain has been the eventual winner more times, but the range of EPL teams that reaches the QF & SF stages is a statement as to the diversity & strength of the league. If it were only Man UTD carrying the EPL, there would be much less appearances on the chart above.
Here’s some thoughts to stick in your pipe & smoke:
· The only country to have 4 teams in the QF stage in a single season is the EPL & they’ve done it twice
· As for the SF, there have been 3 seasons in a row where 3 out of the 4 Semi-finalists were from England – only league to achieve this also
· EPL made SF appearances for 6 seasons in a row, contributing 13 of the 24 places. So basically every 2nd team in the Semi’s was English for 6 years
· Over the past 7 seasons, there have been 7 EPL appearances in the Finals
· There have been 3 finals in this period where both Finalists were from the same league: EPL 07/08 – La Liga 99/00 – Italy 02/03
Over the past 16 years, the EPL is the only league to have made 100%, 16/16 QF appearances (La Liga failed to reach QF in 04/05 – the Istanbul final).
11 of the past 15 seasons (since we haven’t yet reached SF 11/12 we count the past 15 seasons) have seen an EPL team in the SF. Only 4 SF without the EPL, & 3 of those missing seasons were over 10 years ago!!
So this shows that in recent years especially, the EPL has been dominant in the UCL. This also shows the comparative weakness of the remaining leagues.
Germany: in 16 years, Germany has only made 17 QF appearances & Holland only making 4! In fact, Eredivisie haven’t even reached a final since 95/96 (Rijkaard, De Boer, Davids & co.).
In fact since the EPL dominance over the past 7 seasons (7 EPL appearances) there have been 0 French, Dutch or Portuguese teams in the final, 1 German & 3 appearances from La Liga & Serie A.
The EPL remains the biggest force in Europe. A larger range of La Liga teams are entered into the competition, but a larger amount of La Liga teams fail to reach the QF stage. The quality of the 3rd & 4th placed La Liga teams appears to be lower than the EPL if you consider the figures – in the previous 8 seasons, there has only been 1 occasion when there were more La Liga teams in the QF stage than EPL teams.
The truth is that La Liga teams win the finals they do reach the majority of the time. Respect is due to both leagues, both of whom are clearly ahead of the chasing pack in the Champions League. This season is the 1st in the past 7 years that only 1 EPL team has made the QF. It’s likely that this is just a bad year for the EPL. Although it might be a good time to mention this: 98/99 there was only 1 EPL team in the QF stage. That team went on to win one of the most memorable Champions League’s ever – Manchester United 99. There’s hope for Chelsea!!
No comments:
Post a Comment