The English Premier League’s recent financial success has given it a lot of leverage on the European continent. Unsurprisingly, the teams have used the money to buy the best available players on the planet. Considered under this light their recent lack of European success has been nothing short of surprising.
During the 2000s, the Premier League was utterly dominating the football scene over the continent with Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool a fixture in the latter stages of all Champions Leagues’.
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From 2004-05 to 08-09, the Premier League had eleven semifinalists from a maximum possible of 20. During the next five years that number dropped to a paltry 3 out of 20.
This fundamental shift of the centre of football happened in spite of the growing financial muscle of the Premier League. This really begs the question, what has changed so drastically that the sun of the football solar system has become a mere satellite?
Talented players and staff
It would be instructive to analyze the contender teams carefully first. Manchester United, Chelsea, Manchester City, Liverpool, Arsenal have all enjoyed varying levels of success during the last five years in the Premier League. All have lineups that make most of the continental teams look semi-professional. For the sake of it, even their benches have more talent and superstars than entire leagues combined.
Still they have struggled to make it out of their groups’, let alone contend for the titles. As an instructive example, recently Man united lost their first leg in the Europa Cup against FC Midtjylland, a name that evokes more terror in the heart of tongue twister fanatics than the football minded public.
The question is nuanced and a lot of writers have dug their teeth into the problem with limited success. Theories that have been propounded range from the high equality to lack of superstars, but according to me, all of them are missing the fundamental point. While these may be of significance the real reason is different.
The real reason for their downfall seems to be connected to what makes them successful in the first place, money. While it may seem counter-intuitive, the vast amounts of money that have been funneled into the league have made teams’ hungry for instant success. The extra money allows them to buy the best for outrageous sums and when they don’t make an instant impact they are shunted out of the lineups for others.
Lack of stability
Patience has never been a keyword for the football public but the new money has made the teams’ executives and managers impatient too leaving extraordinary players at their whims. Lack of stability is not an entirely new thing but this is the first time its effects have been so drastically encountered.
Just consider the recent summer of 2015 when Manchester United splurged more than 150 million pounds on the likes of Matteo Darmian, Memphis Depay, Morgan Schneiderlin and others. All were and for that matter are superstars for their teams but their performance has been nowhere as dominating as their former teams where they had been playing for several years. Most have been warming the bench for the team during the majority of this years’ campaign after initial uninspiring performances.
While Chelsea and Arsenal have seen fewer personnel changes, their charge in the Champions League has been limited by uneven performances. On the other hand, Liverpool and Man City have made such drastic changes that it seems a stretch to call them the same team they were a couple of years ago.
It is of utmost importance for managers’ to understand that football it at its root a team game and an individual can only display so much brilliance. I am willing to bet that even if Lionel Messi were to play for a Premier League team, they would still struggle to do well. Even the best players have to first find their bearings and mesh with their teammates, only then can they display their true talent. And these vital gears in the cog are being thrown away for being bad before they have had the opportunity to get set.
In the days of yore, when teams had limited money to play with, the teams would fire their managers for having bad campaigns. Now we are witnessing the era when the teams have the financial muscle to instead overhaul their entire team for a failed campaign. This definitely isn’t a good thing as is evidenced by this particular example from the field of cricket.
Premier League needs to get inspired
For the benefit of those who suffered from the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, ICC organized a World XI vs. Australian XI match. In spite of being vastly superior talent wise, the international team was thoroughly trounced. This was despite the fact that cricket in its essence is an individual sport in its battle between the bat and the ball.
How can teams even expect instant success in a sport as a team game such as football. An analysis of the football world reveals the same trend. The most successful teams have also been the most settled with Barcelona, Bayern and Atletico being leading examples.
On the other hand, Real, with its financial power has considerably underachieved despite winning the La Decima over the last few years. And clearly their team’s stability is not an example you would like to put in your son’s textbook.
I find Bayern especially enticing here. While Barcelona have largely ridden the wave of Lionel Messi over the last ten years, Bayern were largely unsuccessful during the 2000s. While they did have Frank Ribery and Arjen Robben at the turn of the decade as true bona fide stars, they have been extremely successful in spite of those two missing huge chunks of time through injuries.
This success has been built largely on a very stable bedrock of their defence and midfield which leads the team through troubled waters when their top players get injured.
It is these examples the Premier League teams need to copy if they want to establish their hegemony on the continental championships again. Knee-jerk reactions can be the jolt that is required to come alive but it can never be the medicine that cures all that ails.
Hopefully, the Premier League teams would understand this lesson sooner rather than later and we would see them compete with the present giants of the continent on an even keel.
While I was younger I always imagined how a league composed of the best players on the planet would be. The present answer that we seem to be getting doesn’t seem very encouraging. At the very least constant churning of even the best leads to disastrous results is all that we can conclude definitively. I am sure this is only a blip caused by changing times but the earlier everyone (especially the ones who matter) understands the same, the better.
