In the pre-Champions League era, when it was known as the European Cup, English teams enjoyed a spell of dominance in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Between 1977 and 1984, teams from the English First Division won six out of the seven editions of Europe’s top competition.
Liverpool were the most successful, with four trophies, but two European cup wins for Nottingham Forest and another for Aston Villa suggested that there was depth to the English supremacy.
But England’s European ascendancy came to an abrupt end in the mid-1980s as English teams were banned from European football following a string of violent incidents, most notably the Heysel Stadium disaster of 1985 when Liverpool fans rioted and 39 people died.
The ban was lifted in the early 1990s, but it took many years for an English team to win Europe’s biggest prize. Following Manchester United’s win in 1999, there have been further successes for Liverpool (2005), Manchester United (2008) and Chelsea (2012), but Spain has been the dominant force in the Champions League, with nine wins this century.
But could that be changing? This year’s Champions League has produced four English quarter-finalists: Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool and Tottenham. English fans watching the Champions League action on BT Sport will have plenty of opportunity to cheer on English teams. And football punters looking for the best Champions League bets on the BigBetBookmakers site will find an English team: Manchester City the 3/1 favourites.
There will be many pundits who suggest that this is indeed significant, and that it shows English football is now the dominant force in Europe. But the truth isn’t quite that simple. The English Premier League, which was founded in 1992, is the wealthiest league in European football, partly because it is the most competitive. Whereas Spanish, French, German and Italian football are now dominated by one or maybe two teams, English football has usually had four or five teams in contention.
And in recent seasons, the list of contenders has increased to encompass a ‘Big Six’, with the addition of Arsenal and Chelsea to the four teams already mentioned. These clubs have secured the lion’s share of the money coming into English football, which has enabled them all to potentially be able to compete in the latter stages of the Champions League.
That bigger pool of top teams means that English football has regularly produced more quarter-finalists than any other nation. In fact, this is the ninth time this century that England has been able to boast the biggest number of teams in the quarter-finals, and the third time that the country has had four representatives in the last eight. Yet that hasn’t translated into regular victories. Instead, Real Madrid and Barcelona, with their even deeper pockets, have been able to amass squads that have proven to be the best in the continent, led by the likes of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
But while the presence of four English teams in the quarter-finals doesn’t necessarily indicate the strength of English football, there are other positive signs of the country’s resurgence, powered by the long overdue investments in coaching and development that began to accelerate after the 2010 World Cup. The English national team has reached a World Cup final and the last four of the UEFA Nations League, while young English players such as Jadon Sancho are increasingly in demand across the continent. Whatever happens in the Champions League, the future for English football looks bright.
