Is an all-English Champions League final good for European football?

With Manchester City and Chelsea set to do battle in this season’s Champions League final, and the punters eagerly examining the Champions League winner odds, it marks the second time in three seasons that the showpiece match of Europe’s premier club competition has been contested by two English clubs. With Liverpool defeating Tottenham Hotspur in Madrid two years ago, and now City and Chelsea preparing to lock horns, it provokes wonder as to whether we are at the beginning of a long period of English dominance in the Champions League.

Of the eight Champions League finalists over the last four seasons, five have been Premier League sides, with one from Spain’s La Liga, one from the German Bundesliga, and one from France’s Ligue 1 making up the other three competitors. It’s clear that English football is at a high point following years where Premier League sides struggled to reach the latter stages of the Champions League, but is the potential for English dominance a positive thing for the European game?

Star attraction

It’s no secret that, over the past few years, the Premier League has become even more of a hotspot for the sport’s best players and coaches. With the likes of Pep Guardiola, Jürgen Klopp, Thomas Tuchel and Carlo Ancelotti plying their trade on English shores, it’s easy to see why the world’s best players would want to play for English clubs. Indeed, the arrival of players like Timo Werner, Kai Havertz and Thiago Alçantara to the Premier League last summer is evidence of this.

Of course, it’s hardly a positive thing that the majority of young talent is attracted to one league, but it’s possible that this is simply a point of time where the older generation of stars in Spain, Italy and Germany are being gradually fazed out, and soon we will see a greater desire for players to move to top clubs in those countries. In England, where clubs like Chelsea are having to spend big to challenge the likes of Manchester City and Liverpool at the top of the table, it’s natural that players would be attracted there at this moment, but things can change very quickly in football.

Crumbling giants?

Another interesting aspect of all this is that a number of Europe’s biggest clubs are struggling financially in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Indeed, many of these clubs already had large amounts of debt before the pandemic, with the last 12 months or so only exacerbating the problem. Much has been made of the off-field struggles of Real Madrid and Barcelona, and it’s no wonder that those two clubs are perhaps not quite as successful in Europe right now.

The reality is that all these things move in cycles, and while English clubs may be enjoying success in the Champions League at the present time, things can turn around in the blink of an eye. The likes of Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus are too big to not recover their status in the UEFA Champions League odds and find their way back to the top of European football. While some may find it dull that the Champions League final is being contested by two clubs from the same country, English football supporters should soak it in while they still can.