Is the Premier League poised to dominate Europe?
The last time I wrote a post, it sparked mass controversy. This time I’ll try to keep it more low key in that sense 
. I’ll also keep it (relatively) short and to the point.
Many people (myself included) believe that the premier league is the most entertaining league. Fast football. End-to-end stuff. Arsene Wenger even goes as far as saying that this (England) is the centre of the football world and that the English fans are “unique”. My question is: is it becoming the most dominant league in the world?
A much talked about point of late is that 3 of the 4 CL semi-finalists last season were English clubs – something that (I think) has never happened before (for English clubs that is). Some say that it’s an anomaly – a one-off. Others (Sir Alex included) say it illustrates that English football is finally starting to dominate Europe – something the Spanish and Italians have done for a while. By dominate, I don’t mean one club only (e.g. Liverpool in the 80s) but 2 or 3. In Chelsea, Man Utd and Liverpool; England have 3 such clubs that could start such domination (Arsenal fans will argue that they should be in this – I’m not so sure ).
Another point is the growing number of takeovers in the English game reflecting the growing attraction of ownership of English clubs. Chelsea, Man Utd, Liverpool, West Ham and Aston Villa to name a few that have foreign owners. Why so? The fact that total club revenues (according to Deloitte) for 07-08 were 1.8bn, 40% higher than its next competitor (Serie A), makes it is easy to understand why. But thats just the beginning of the good news for English clubs.
Next year, as is well-publicised, will see the introduction of an extremely lucrative TV deal that will, for the first time, match our counterparts in la liga. Actually, the TV deal will result in English clubs surpassing Spanish clubs. Next season’s top club will be compensated with £50m. The bottom club will earn a reported £27m. Not too shabby heh? To put this into perspective, the premier league will only be behind the NFL in terms of TV deals. So what does this have to do with dominance? In fact, it has a lot to do with it.
More money (significantly more), for all English clubs, will mean that they can compete even more with foreign clubs for the best players; for the best talent. Couple this with the fact that many clubs have foreign owners who are eager to invest in players and the picture is even brighter. Some of the effects can be seen already. West Ham, for example, were prepared to offer £18m for Darren Bent. This is a club which just survived relegation. Villa spent big in the Jan transfer window (for a mid-table club). Compare this to the other major European leagues and I doubt you would find either a mid-table club or relegation club spending as much.
In addition, the premier league is now attracting young talent more than ever – like a moth to a flame. Make a list of all the best ‘young’ talent in the world and see how many are now based in England. When I say young talent I mean guys that have proven themselves in some sort as being quality players. Consider the following players: Ronaldo, Rooney, Fabregas, Denilson, Messi, Higuain, Sergio Ramos, Aguerro, Torres, Tevez, Nani, Anderson, Eduardo da Silva, Giovanni Dos Santos, Robinho, Mascherano, Podolski, Lennon, Mikel, Robben, Martins, Schweinsteiger, Dani Alves, Huntelaar, van der Vaart….there are more players, which I have missed out on so dont harp on that. My point is this, how many of those players are now based in England? Quite a few I would say and definitely more than ever before.
To conclude the post: the premier league is now the most lucrative league and together with investment from foreign owners, clubs are able to prize away more talent than they could before (and possible, in time to come, more than other top European leagues). Ultimately, this could result in the premier league becoming the dominant force in European football.
As usual, I would love to hear your guys thoughts.
spain has more talented individuals and greater depth in regards to second tier sides, but with all the money in england at the moment that could change. I think that there is only Barca and Real in Spain at AC, Inter and Juve that can compete with the $, though italy seems to be falling behind. Not enough world class youths come through england, not with flair and world class technique anyway.
Good one – I totally agree with you although I do think that English teams tend to pay too much for players (10m for Young, a bit overpriced eh?). The fact is that Cheslea, Man Utd and Liverpool have all become like Barcelona and Real Madrid in Spain (they attract all the best players). This can only be good and the fact that for the past three years the CL final had one PL team prooves your point.
Good post totaly agree with.
The other reason is theat Premiera and Seria A lost their ground they are 2 teams (Barca Real Sev. or Val.can quilify but they are no thret) that can compete in CL…the same goes for Italy (Milan, Inter may be Juve we will see)
Think where EPL has scored over Serie A and Premiera Liga is in the marketing aspect … The reach of EPL is much more globally and wider audience base leads to increased revenue in form of television revenues and merchandize deals … Primarily because of the glamour quotient which again comes with large audience base plus the broadcast quality — listening to Premiera Liga and SerieA match english commentaries broadcasted in Singapore can put you to sleep … And I would assume majority of money generated through TV deals is coming from english speaking nations…
I would think no one here will dispute the fact that watching kaka, del piero, totti or ronaldhinio, messi morientes play isn’t as exciting as watching ronaldo, drogba or fabregas play… Point being, quality of football aint all that better or worse —
Looking at the last 5 years champions league semi finals – there have been 7 english clubs, 6 italian and 4 spanish leagues(won twice by italians and once each by english and spanish teams)… Taking in these facts along with UEFA cup figures – only one EPL team has won it in last decade (liverpool-2001) – I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that EPL teams are made up of better quality teams….
They do dominate, but not because of on-field activities, rather off field ones …
I’m not sure if you can judge the league based on their best players. Hell, right now the award for best squad seems to be split three ways between Barca (w/Henry), Inter and Chelsea (whether United’s new squad can be considered on par remains to be seen).
There’s no doubt the England has closed the gap and now even surpassed Italy and Spain in terms of money and global recognition. But there’s one area where Italy and Spain still lead and that’s in the superiority of their football culture. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to turn this into a debate about the English ’styles’ and other ’styles’. But my feeling is that the general approach that Italy and Spain’s football governing bodies adopted a long time ago produces naturally more skillfull players. The best English players are skillfull, Rooney and Gerard prove that better than any argument. But move further down the ladder (waaaay further down) and you’ll find some squads with English players whose basic skills (passing, dribbling, etc) are sorely lacking.
In the modern day where the top teams (and, increasingly, even those below them) have at least half their players coming from non United Kingdom perhaps the importance of local talent is reduced, but their importance will never become nothing. Local players will always be the backbone of a football league and thus the superior basic abilities of the Serie A and La Liga puts it just a head above England, at least in terms of quality/entertainment value.
Eish
I forog to add the point that many still believe that Spain has/produces the most talented players – technique-wise that is
Spain is probably better seeing as how mid-table teams in Spain have world-class players like Atletico Madrid who finished more or less the same as Bolton in the premiership having players like Aguero and Maxi Rodriquez and up until recently Fernando Torres meanwhile Bolton have Kevin Nolan. In Spain the mid-table clubs can sometimes challenge the big 3 (Valencia, Barca and Real) whereas in England that would be unthinkable look at Sevilla this year who were something like 6th the year before and they were in the running up until the last week of the season.
That said I still prefer the premier league because of the extra coverage and the fact that the team that I support are in it.
@Liam
Have Sevilla challenges the Big 3 because they were very good or were Real and Barca seriously off tune.
A brief history. Sevilla was always a “bigger” club in Spain. Not near the level of Madrid or Barça, and until recently not considered even in the same group as Atlético (Spain’s 3rd club, NOT Valencia), Athletic Bilbao (despite hard times one of the institutions of Spanish football), Valencia, or even Deportivo which at the beginning of the 90s began to perform very well. To this day, in fact, Betis has more fans in Spain than Sevilla does.
In the early 90s Sevilla pursued a policy of signing “big” (usually fading) players, the epitome of this being Diego Maradona, who did not work out, the club was very poorly managed and they were relegated on two occasions, their finances an absolute mess. But a new administration and policy were brought to the club under Del Nido, who is an insufferable person, but has run the club well, and Monchi, who is the man primarily responsible for Sevilla’s ability to buy/recruit quality players long before they become household names. Now they are a very well-run, profitable club, with a solid squad and have been performing well and winning titles for years. They also have a coherent approach to their signings and appointments, meaning that a change of personnel does not force them to entirely remake the team. However we’ll see how long this lasts, in Spanish football well-run teams come and go, and flirt with success, usually only to find themselves over-extended – they simply don’t have the fan base or infrastructure to continue at the levels they reach. Alavés (now a disaster under Piterman, but in the 90s a success story), Mallorca, Real Sociedad, Celta Vigo, are all cases of teams going up and just as quickly coming back down. Perhaps Deportivo is the best example; they achieved even more success than Sevilla has, winning a league in 2000, 2 cups, 3 supercups, good CL performances including a semifinal, and finishing 2nd plac ein the league on four separate occasions. To put this into perspective Sevilla hasn’t finished 2nd for well over 40 years.
But they did not have the finances to build a squad able to handle the rigours of CL+Domestic football, they were overextended, and now they have serious financial difficulties and a low quality squad, and will probably be nothing more than decent midtable team for the forseeable future. I would not be at all surprised if Sevilla finds itself in the same situation in 6-10 years.
Regarding the post in general, here is what is happening. Just as wealth in the Premiership has been concentrated primarily in the hands of the “big 4″ over the past decade – and let it be said that it almost surely would have been a “big 3″, excluding Chelsea, had Abramovich not come and changed things completely; now it’s Arsenal who are the most tenuous members of this “big 4″ – wealth in European football as a whole is being concentrated in the Premiership vis a vis other leagues.
This is happening mainly for two reasons: 1-English football, thanks in part to its brilliant marketing combined with the English colonial legacy (i.e. English being the world’s lingua franca, large English influence in Asia and Asia’s recent growth), is the most attractive proposition for those interested in buying a football club, and 2-English clubs are simply easier to buy, many of them formerly being PLCs or in the hands of local owners, often families, who were not realizing the potential of their clubs.
First the top clubs were bought, Chelsea starting it off, because they happened to be in the right situation at the right time – London-based, somewhat glamorous, easy to buy because of their poor economic situation – although Abramovich because of the money he’s shoveled into the club, making it a “big 4″ entity, is a bit of an anomaly. But next to go were Man Utd, and soon after Liverpool (with a couple smaller examples such as Portsmouth or Aston Villa), and I think it’s a matter of time before Arsenal goes down the same path. The feeding frenzy has continued and if not this season, then probably next, over half of the club’s in England will be in the hands of private billionaire owners.
This cannot happen in Spain or Italy. In Italy, because this is already the case, the top clubs are already in the hands of Italian billionaire owners – Inter=Moratti, Juventus=Agnelli, Milan=Berlusconi, etc – and the smaller clubs are not interesting investments. And in Spain it won’t happen because Real Madrid and Barcelona are impossible to buy, as Abramovich himself has stated (they were his first two options). The remaining clubs in Spain that might be interesting to buyers (Valencia, Zaragoza), with the possible exception of Atletico are also fan-controlled to a certain extent and very difficult to buy.
For a roadmap (minus the corruption) of what’s to come for English football, just see Italian football 1980-2000. I have no doubt English clubs will eventually become dominant in Europe to a certain extent, with only Madrid, Barcelona, Inter, Milan, Juventus eventually and perhaps Bayern and an exceptionally well run club like Porto or Valencia occasionally able to compete. But at what cost?
If this trend continues NUFC will be the only English-owned club left in the Premiership. I’m not sure how interesting it will be in the long term for many English fans when their clubs are owned by billionaire sugar daddies. Many of these clubs such as Man Utd and Liverpool have been bought by leveraging debt against the asset which is purchased, causing massive interest payments due where none existed before. Yes, I know people have argued that the interest is more or less equivalent to paying dividends as a PLC, but what isn’t mentioned is that the dividends paid are dependent on profit, whereas debt interest is not something that can be lowered should it suit the interests of the entity. It is always there, year after year, and in order to make it managable constant success is required, because despite your huge TV deal, it is this success which: boosts marketing, allos price increases and provides for full stadiums, and directly brings in revenue (both from the TV deal and from Cl performances). Thus continued and instant success is mandatory. Developing English players will take a seat even further back than it is now because the necesity to attain immediate success will encourage clubs to buy, and not develop, their squads. You can see this everywhere.
Arsenal will not, I’m fairly sure, win the league this coming season. They will probably not win next season either. But they can survive this, in their current state.
Can Man Utd go 6 years without winning an important title?
Shaheen, i think a bit of both, i dont think that real were off tune, just barca. i pretty much thought that real would be between 70-80 points, just thought barca would be around 90. if they manage to hold on to their best players unlike in the past (eg, baptista, reyes and ramos), and keep the likes of dani alves, adriano and kanoute ( as well as their manager) then i do think that sevilla could be part of a big four, however i remeber sociedad a few years ago and now they are in the segunda liga.
I think that england’s top four is better than spain’s, but the the 2nd tier if teams is not. Spain, like england in the CL, had 3 out of the four semi- finalists of the uefa cup, and both finalists. however, when sevilla( now seen as a top four club) played spurs, they did not look that much better. now would hate to see spurs as part of a ‘big five’, but i cant see any of spain’s 2nd tier teams beating spurs in a match when spurs are improving and clubs like villareal and athleico are losing big players. i see teams like newcastle getting stonger as well so i feel that given a few years the better teams battling in their respective leagues for uefa cup places, will come from england.
avrv Newcastle are owned by a foreigner – Mike Ashley and also at the start of the season Sevilla were the pacesetters but I will agree that they do have a pretty low quality squad but there are some gems in there (Jesus Navas and Dani Alves) and there does always seem to be a club who would usually be mid table making a push for the CL didn’t Osasuna make it last season and look at teams like Real Sociedad who qualified I think 2 or 3 years ago and now are relegated so it makes the league better for a neutral but if you are an avid supporter it is very topsy-turvy and inconsistant I mean a few seasons back Barcelona were finishing mid-table. That said despite being a United supporter first I do like some Spanish teams like Barca and Atletico who play nice attacking football and I think that with the signing of Forlan will amount to more goals for Atletico than Torres got them and any news on the midfielders that they were meant to bring in?
Shaheen Seedat:
How are the English top clubs going to surpass the Spanish clubs in the TV deals when Real Madrid and Barcelona will be earning €150 million and €135 million per season? Thats more then double of what the top English clubs will be earning.
Real Madrid signed the biggest TV deal in Sports history, a contract of €1.1 billion Euro over the span of 7 years. Barcelona signed a slightly less then that, €1 billion Euros. No English club can match that.
Redondo…thats interesting. Ive never heard of that…Im not doubting it. From what Ive read, thats what Ive written. Im no expert but I trusted that my sources were reliable.
Th exact quote: “The new deals will, by a significant margin, provide the Premier League with the second richest set of television contracts negotiated by any sports league in the world when measured on a gross basis, behind only the NFL”
TBH… I never said that the “top English clubs will surpass the top Spanish clubs” I said that English clubs (as a group) will surpass Spanish clubs (as a group).
i agree with you bro but the end result always dissapoints the english fans in europe (Leave the scousers out here)
Real madrid barca and Ac milan Juventus they are always called big guns in europe and still remain so its tough for us to come up but yes more and more global talent is now coming in EPl so yes we are likely to have an all english CL final soon And i guess the red devils be one of them
Here is a article about;
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/20/sports/web.1120soccer.php
http://www.sportbusiness.com/news/160807/real-madrid-sign-massive-tv-rights-deal
“Real Madrid will sell television rights to its games through 2013 to the production company Grupo Mediapro for €1.1 billion in what it called a record deal for a sports team.”
But i agree with you, The Premier League clubs will surpass La Liga as a group but not individually, such as Barcelona, Real Madrid, Valencia and now Sevilla.
Until the premier league begins to nurture more home grown talent, it will not be fulfilling all of its duties as a league. In both Spain and Italy far higher percentages of squads were homegrown than in England – not that im against the likes of Ronaldo, Drogba and Toure, or even emerging talents like Nani or Merida, but squads should contain fewer foreigners and more Englishmen. The clubs should put more money in their academies, for there is plenty of talent out there, just not always properly nurtured.
Putting aside all the money, quality of football and glamor aside…i think the real reason as to why the premiership is more popular is because of the way the game is played in england…long ball aside, the pace and speed of the English game is much more obvious than the spanish game..keeping supporters on their toes for a full 90 min is not easy, and the premiership does it more consistently than any other league…
Except for Chelsea you mean
RMJ that is true to a certain extent. For the scores of millions of “fans” in places like Malaysia, China, Thailand etc, in other words, places with very little or a very young footballing heritage, this type of football is considering quality and exciting. And while I enjoy the aggression and energy in the matches I watch – which now tend to be the “big” matches – the times I’ve watched matches between mid- and low-table sides the lack of technique, sometimes basic, has been painful.
Another reason is the colonial issue. Someone pointed that out here. Many countries were once owned by England and tend to show more English league games than others – as a generalisation
the premiership has too much money for its own good. there is very very little home grown talent. it was a good league before the insane amounts of money came. serie a is the best and only INTER, AC, and JUVE have money. you can buy the english league, but not the champions league. english clubs need to stop buying so many foreign players. FORZA INTERNAZIONALE. p.s. I also really like AC MILAN AND JUVENTUS