This week, in just 30 minutes, the English Premier League went from being the best soccer league in Europe to being the worst in just one game in Munich.
First, Arsenal barely made it out of the Champions League after a limp loss to Bayern Munich in the quarterfinals on Wednesday night. After thirty minutes, Manchester City, who was protecting their title, messed up against Real Madrid and lost on penalties.
Then, as if to show how bad things were in England, both Liverpool and West Ham were kicked out of the Europa League on Thursday night. It seemed like the Premier League would win all of this season’s big European trophies, but it won’t be able to. The last four of the Champions League and Europa League will not have an English club for the first time since 2015.
“We did not make the most of the chances we had,” Pep Guardiola, the boss of Man City, said. “I should thank my players for how they played, but this is about the results.” They’ll be in the playoffs, but we won’t be.
For people who know even a little about European football, seeing all of England’s teams fall apart at once is like seeing the stock market go down. The Premier League has by far the biggest clubs in the sport, which gives English teams unmatched financial power to sign top players.
Even the worst team in England’s top league makes more in prize money and TV rights fees than France, Italy, or Germany’s winners. It made sense for teams from the Premier League to have made it to the Champions League final five times in the last six years.
But this week showed that money doesn’t automatically win these events. This is especially true when Manchester City, Liverpool, and Arsenal are in the middle of a tough three-horse race for the Premier League title at home.
Still, City had every reason to think it could successfully defend the Champions League title it won last spring in Istanbul. It had the deepest squad in England, which had cost more than $1 billion to put together. After a 3–3 draw in Spain in the first game, Man City was still a heavy favourite to beat Real Madrid at home on Wednesday night.
As it turned out, it was one of the worst nights in recent club history. There were 33 shots on goal by Man City, who had 67% of the ball. Madrid scored the first goal in the 12th minute and didn’t have another shot on target the whole game. It was clear which team was in charge.
Even though City had a lot of chances to score, they couldn’t until Kevin de Bruyne scored in the 76th minute. Real still bent without breaking even after that. When the shootout was over, Real Madrid had made it to the semifinals for the 12th time in 14 years.
Guardiola said, “We did everything, and I don’t feel bad about what we did.” “They defended deeper than in previous years, and we made the chances to score.” But goals are what sport is all about. “They did it better than we did.”
It happened before. Guardiola has had a lot of bad dreams about Real Madrid, who has eliminated three of his teams from the Champions League in the last ten years. It was Real Madrid who beat Guardiola’s Bayern Munich 5-0 over two legs in 2014. And two years ago, Real beat Guardiola’s City by scoring three goals after the 89th minute to turn their playoff on its head.
After the game, Madrid star Jude Bellingham said, “Most teams would fall apart when City get on top.” “But we worked hard and stood up.” At the end of the game, I’m out of breath.
More generally, the general failure has one real effect on English football that goes beyond the shame of this spring. The Champions League will have 36 teams instead of 32 next season, so England had the chance to add a fifth team to the tournament. The issue is a complicated system called the UEFA coefficient, which is based on how well each country does in European competitions. Which means that England is today behind Germany and Italy in that way.
England may be lucky that Aston Villa is still playing in the third-tier Europa Conference League. But that won’t help the four Premier League clubs whose dreams of going to Europe were dashed in just 24 hours.
Chelsea boss Mikel Arteta said, “Those margins come from something else that maybe we don’t have yet.” “We need to learn it…That will not make us feel better today, that’s for sure.
Get in touch with Joshua Robinson at [email protected].
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