Champions
League Drama
It helps that English sides don’t have to face the other English sides in this opening phase. The decision to separate teams from the same country in the fixture computer is sensible from a variety point of view, because nobody really wants to see clubs who play each other twice a season anyway domestically have to meet again in continental competition. But the side effect is that the English sides effectively have easier games.
The coefficient is spiking, rising rapidly and bursting through, like mercury in a cartoon thermometer. After Wednesday’s results, England’s collective club coefficient — the rankings used to determine how many spots a particular country is granted into UEFA competitions — over the past five seasons breached the 100 mark, sitting at 100.227, some way clear of Italy on 88.658 and Spain on 82.578.
Granted, poring over coefficient ratings is probably not what you got into football to get excited about, but it is a handy way of demonstrating just how dominant English sides have been.
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Is this good? The Premier League, a collection of the world’s most accomplished back-slappers, will obviously think so. The ethos of the English top flight is more, more, more, bigger is better, crush the opposition, dominate — so this will be a validation. But the fact that the rest of the Champions League, aside from the real elite, are apparently struggling to compete can’t be a good thing for what is supposed to be the biggest and flashiest competition in world club football.
Not that this is really much of a surprise. English clubs have been so financially dominant for so long that a scenario like this was always likely.
Premier League sides spent a little over £3billion on transfer fees this past summer, more than the other big four leagues in Spain, Italy, Germany and France combined. Liverpool spent £415m (while recouping about half of it in player sales), which is approaching what the whole of Ligue 1 spent. Outside of Barcelona, Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and probably Bayern, European sides cannot compete financially with anyone in the Premier League.
Manchester City buying Tijjani Reijnders from Milan is one thing, but when Newcastle can take Malick Thiaw off them and the seven-time European champions can’t do much about it, then it emphasises the different levels we’re dealing with. Money isn’t everything in football, but it is a lot, and it certainly affords you the chance to make more mistakes.
What can be done? The various financial regulations in place can’t really equalise this, because they’re linked with revenue, so as long as the Premier League keeps making money, it will keep using that income to assert its dominance. Essentially, until the Premier League stops being able to rake in such huge sums in TV money, it’s difficult to see how the situation will change.
One question that should be asked is whether the extra Champions League place should actually go to the nation with the best results. The more teams from England that are in the competition each season, the more the divide is stratified. It’s already much easier for English clubs to attract players, given the existing financial disparity, but when more of them have Champions League football to offer as well, it makes things even more difficult for the rest.
Would it not be better to give the extra place to another league, one which might benefit from it in the longer term?
Sure, that might result in a few adverse results in the short term, but it would theoretically help balance things out. That there are six English teams this season is the result of a slightly unusual confluence of circumstances, but that in itself emphasises the dominance of the Premier League: Tottenham and Manchester United finished 17th and 15th last season, but muscled out every other team in the Europa League to make its final, thus earning England another spot in the big one. Chelsea also won the third-tier Conference League without really breaking a sweat.
The counter to all of this is the fact that, for all this dominance at this stage of the competition, English teams actually haven’t won the whole thing quite as often as their financial might suggests they should.
There have been seven English winners out of 33 since the competition rebranded from the old European Cup. Real Madrid have managed more than that on their own, and while they are a slightly special case, it does make you think that the challengers from these shores have underachieved, given their modern resources.
But at this stage of the 2025-26 edition, the English sextet are sweeping pretty much all before them.
That’s good for the Premier League, but is it good for everyone else?
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