Champions League Final 2021: The European Super League Non-Committed Members Final

Caught the Champions League final yesterday, as I always do, and I've been thinking about the narratives I could take from it. There were a few, the most obvious one being the fact mentioned in the title, which is that Chelsea and Manchester City were the first two members of the mooted European Super League to pull out when everyone got all up in arms about it.

I think the most interesting one, though, is the fact that this is the eighth final overall that was contested between two teams from the same country. If you narrow it down to the current era of Big 4 dominance (the big 4 being Spain, England, Germany and Italy), it's the sixth time this has happened since 2004, which was the last final in which a Big 4 team wasn't involved. It's also the third all-English final, compared with two all-Spanish finals in the same period (Real Madrid v Atletico Madrid in 2014 and 2016), and one all-German final (Bayern Munich v Borussia Dortmund in 2013). Prior to 2004 there were just two such finals, in 2000 (Real Madrid v Valencia) and 2003 (Milan v Juventus).

This has been my hobbyhorse for a few years now (or you could say for as long as I've had this blog), but I find that the increasing weight given to the Big 4 countries has distorted the competition in unfortunate ways. I understand the argument that viewers would rather see the stars of Madrid and Barcelona in the final, than Partizan Belgrade vs Benfica, to pull two teams out at random. Indeed, this was the reasoning behind the ESL, and the reason why I think that idea hasn't been killed off completely.

On the other hand, European games between teams from the same country are frequently less than stellar - the most recent example being the 2019 final, when Liverpool beat Spurs 2-0. This is just like when the biggest teams play one another in the league: they play more conservatively because they'd rather avoid losing than positively go out and win. Yesterday's game is a pretty good example, since there was just one goal, at the end of the first half, and Man City didn't manage any shots on goal after about 20 minutes.

I think this was one of the best arguments against the ESL, incidentally - part of what makes the European cup special is seeing match-ups that you wouldn't get to see normally, like Real Madrid against Manchester United or Barcelona vs Bayern Munich. But even before the ESL these match-ups were becoming commonplace - for instance two of this season's quarterfinals were rematches of the previous two finals (Bayern vs PSG in 2020 and Real vs Liverpool in 2019).

On top of that, the club of winners is growing increasingly rarefied. This may have been Man City's first Champions League final, but it was the third time Chelsea had contested it, and the second time they won. Indeed, Chelsea is the most recent first-time winner, having first won the tournament in 2012; before them the previous first-time winner was Borussia Dortmund, all the way back in 1997. Beyond Dortmund there were three other teams who won it for the first time in 1990s, among whom are Barcelona, and six who won it for the first time in the 1980s.

Of course, the reason it was so much more open then is that the tournament didn't feature so many teams from so few countries. That's also why we've started seeing so many match-ups from a single country - if half the places are already guaranteed to go to the top four teams from each of the top four countries (plus another three from France and two from Russia) then it's actually quite hard for none of the Big 4 to be represented in the final.

The odd thing about this type of match-up is how the teams have placed in their league. Man City won the Premier League pretty handily this season, while Chelsea just squeaked into fourth place on the final day, despite losing to Aston Villa. They notched up 67 points compared with Man City's 86, so it's pretty clear that over the course of the 380 games that made up this EPL season, City were the best team overall. Yet they lost to a team that performed nowhere near as impressively and had to make a mid-season managerial change.

Does that mean that Chelsea are actually better than City? No, even if City were hamstrung by Pep Guardiola overthinking his tactics and playing everyone out of the positions in which they did so well. But it also doesn't mean Chelsea aren't deserving champions, even if they only qualified for this tournament by coming in fourth in last season's EPL.

We can argue the merits of the current Champions League format all we want, but it's maybe a little sobering to think that the fourth-best team in England is better than any of the other champions in Europe. If that's true, then it says something about the gulf in class between the Big 4 leagues and those in the rest of Europe. The ESL wasn't aiming to fix that, but let's also not pretend that the status quo is in any way equitable.

Another Premier League Season Done and Dusted

I don't usually mark the end of the Premier League season, but this has been such a remarkable one that it felt right to note down some thoughts on the final day. You can't argue that anything particularly surprising happened on this last match day, particularly the identities of the top four teams, but given how it's blurred in with last season it's just felt like such a long marathon to get here.

That marathon aspect is the first thing I want to talk about, since the season started late, owing to the long break last season when the pandemic hit. That delay meant the 2019-2020 season ended late, and left us with an abnormally short summer break - the narrative for the players all this season has been the fatigue and risk of injuries caused by not having a proper break over the summer. This all means that the past two seasons have blurred together, so that it's hard to remember that, for example, Bruno Fernandes has now been at Manchester United for about a year and a half, or that Aston Villa stayed up by the skin of their teeth in 2020 (when this season started I honestly thought they'd gone down).

The other reason that 2020 to now has felt like one long slog is that my beloved football podcasts haven't had a break either. When the previous season ended, Football Weekly had a wrap-up episode to talk about what had just happened, and then the following week launched into preparations for the season that was about to start a few weeks hence. I think we might have a similar situation this summer, as the upcoming European Championships mean that Football Weekly and Totally Football won't be taking long breaks to recharge.

As for the winners, it's felt a bit anticlimactic that, after the upheaval of 2020 and all its knock-on effects, the champions should be Manchester City again, for the third time in the last four seasons. This is not to detract from their achievement, since they not only came back from a slow start to win the league by 12 points, but they did it by adapting their tactics to the new circumstances of everybody being exhausted and without their main goalscorer, Sergio Aguero. 

Much was made of how out of sorts the big teams were - for instance, when reigning champions Liverpool lost 7-2 to Aston Villa - but City did well to manage their energy, especially in the nervy last few weeks before they clinched the title. There was a point where City lay 10 points ahead of Manchester United, and the title was likely theirs but not sewn up, and they lost a couple of games, which kept the title race plodding along. At the time it was clear that they could afford to drop points, in order to have their first team fresh for the Champions League (and they're now in the final of that competition, so Guardiola's strategy worked).

It's also interesting that City win this season with the lowest total points for a champion since Leicester won the Premier League in 2015-2016 (86 vs 81). More than indicating that City were out of sorts, I feel that total reflects Guardiola's concession that his team didn't need to win every single game to lock in the title - it's just an interesting contrast to the 2017-2018 season where they steamrolled everything in their path to end the season on a record 100 points.

The final notable aspect of this season was the fallout from the European Super League. Man City was, of course, one of the teams involved, but also one of the first to pull back from those plans. That short summer break between seasons likely cut into the top clubs' income by not allowing them their traditional off-season tours of foreign markets, and that lack of money is what precipitated the ESL announcement. Luckily, fan voices made themselves heard in this case, and the plan lasted less than a week, but it would have been an even better repudiation of the ESL if Leicester had managed to beat Tottenham today and get into the Champions League places - especially given that the ESL was a clear response to Leicester's unexpected title triumph in 2015-2016.

In any case, this season's now been consigned to the history books. I'm looking forward to a little break from the weekly football grind, when I'll be watching Euro 2020 daily. But mostly I'm hoping for a more successful fantasy league season in 2021-22, as this one was roundly disappointing.

Spoiler-Filled Thoughts on Ted Lasso

Just finished watching Ted Lasso the other day, and I'm left with The Feels, to a certain extent. I'll be talking about plot points from all over Season 1, so consider this your spoiler warning for anything after the break:

Life, the Universe and Everything

Turned 42 today, so according to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I know the answer to life, the universe and everything, which is of course, 42.

Only problem is, now I still have to figure out the question. I'm reasonably sure it's neither "How many roads must a man walk down" nor "what's six times seven", but I suppose scientific rigor suggests that I not rule them out without thorough investigation.

That said, if anyone has figured this out, please leave a comment below with your insights. I'm sure the rest of us would be grateful.