EPL clubs no longer feared in European competition
By Edgar Acero
Chelsea is the only EPL team to reach the Champions League semifinals in each of the last three seasons.
English clubs used to inspire fear in the UEFA Champions League. That magical night in Istanbul when Steven Gerrard’s Liverpool orchestrated a furious comeback against Paolo Maldini’s AC Milan in 2005, or the all-English final between Manchester United and Chelsea in Moscow in 2008 serve as reminders: The best teams from the EPL were both respected and dreaded by their European competitors.
Not anymore.
Ahead of the first leg of the quarterfinal match between Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City, PSG head coach Laurent Blanc seemed pleased to draw Manchester City, the only English club left in the competition this season.
“We were happy to avoid playing the two ogres of European football, Barcelona and Bayern Munich,” said Blanc during his pregame press conference. “And you can add a third one into that, Real Madrid.”
And while the game in Paris ended 2-2 and gives an encouraging advantage to City for the second leg in Manchester next week, Blanc has a point: EPL teams are not feared any longer.
“Maybe I’m wrong but I don’t see many English teams in the last four of the Champions League in the last five or six years so there are problems in every domestic league, trust me,” said Blanc, who was answering questions about the quality of the competition PSG faces in France.
And while the EPL is far more competitive than Ligue 1 at this point, Blanc’s comments are still accurate. Manchester City is only the fourth English team to reach the Champions League quarterfinals in the past five years. Should Manuel Pellegrini’s men overcome PSG on Apr. 12, they’ll become just the second EPL team to reach the semifinals in each of the last three seasons. That’s a stark contrast to what transpired between 2004-05 and 2008-09, when 12 English clubs reached the semifinals. Spain only had four representatives, while Italy had three and the Netherlands just one.
The dynamic has been changing rapidly as the Premier League’s top clubs are no longer at the level of Barcelona, Bayern Munich or Real Madrid, a fact clearly indicated this season by the rise of teams like Leicester City, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United.
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Unlike their counterparts from Spain or Germany, the EPL’s top teams are facing very particular and unique problems that go beyond tough competition from other teams in their league. Once-mighty Liverpool has been reduced to an Europa League competitor, while Arsenal has reached a point of complacency under Arsene Wenger by being mere participants rather than protagonists. Meanwhile, Manchester United is a shadow of what it used to be under Sir Alex Ferguson. They have yet to recover from the void left by the Scottish manager after a horrendous experience with David Moyes and an inconsistent run under Louis van Gaal.
Chelsea was the last English team to put a solid effort in European competition, winning the Champions League in 2011-12. The Blues went on to reach the semifinals in 2014, but by then the drop in form from English clubs was clear: There were no EPL teams in the Champions League quarterfinals in both 2013 and 2015.
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Fast-forward to 2016 and Chelsea is now a team looking for stability after the departure of Jose Mourinho, who until this season had been the most consistent manager for the club during the Roman Abramovich era.
And so it is up to Manchester City — a club currently undergoing an awkward set of changes — to stand up against much-better prepared teams from Europe. So far they’re doing a good job with PSG, but their chances of overcoming a Barcelona or a Bayern Munich are very slim.
Pellegrini will be replaced by Pep Guardiola, which is an encouraging change. Still, the respected manager will only be in Manchester long after this season is over.