Euro 2024: Life is Meaningless and Full of Pain...

 And on top of that, it is an endless journey through this vale of tears, etc, etc.

I'm not exactly heartbroken that Italy went out at this stage, because if they'd nicked a result against Switzerland, it would have increased the likelihood of a 2012 style humiliation. But it was a tough performance to watch. There was no pressing, not much passing, no midfield worthy of the name. Gianluigi Donnarumma kept Italy in it, and Federico Chiesa valiantly led the otherwise nonexistent line, but apart from them this was abject, even without considering that Italy were the current holders.

Whatever. I can look forward to us not qualifying for the World Cup in two years, and then Euro 2028 after that. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to seeing how Germany, Spain, England and the surprise packages of Austria and Switzerland get on.

Euro 2024: Matchday 3 and All the Heartbreak

Well, here we are, the end of the Euro 2024 group stage. The wheat has been separated from the chaff, the fourth-placed teams ruthlessly eliminated and the knockout rounds mapped out. Despite the lack of surprises in the early stages of the tournament, there have been a couple of interesting happenings - though no real giant-killings or shocks at big teams crashing out early. The closest we came is the Netherlands coming in third in their group, though they also turned out to be the top-ranked third-placed team.

Ukraine going out at this stage was a little bit of a surprise, if not a shock, but their group turned out super weird. Everyone finished on four points, and because the head-to-head records didn't apply, it came down to goal difference - which meant that Ukraine's opening 3-0 loss to Romania is what did for them. If they could have beaten Slovakia by more goals, or if they could have beaten Belgium... But this is just how the round-robin system works. There was little to separate the four (I believe I called this the Group of Meh), and in the end it came down to a fine margin like that.

There were two types of surprises. The first, and most positive, was certain unfancied teams qualifying for the Round of 16. Slovenia, Austria, Romania, Slovakia and most of all Georgia all fall into this category. Slovenia was lucky to find itself in a group with an England and Denmark (and Serbia, it should be said) who weren't firing on all cylinders. Same with Romania and Slovakia, given how strong Belgium were in previous tournaments. Georgia, on the other hand, came through a really tough group by beating Portugal (who were, admittedly, already qualified and playing their B team), while Austria came through an even tougher group and won more points than either France or the Netherlands. Regardless of what happens next, that's a good achievement for both teams.

The other type of surprise was how many of the fancied teams didn't dominate. England may have come first, but only Romania topped their group with fewer points. On the other hand, I expected France to dominate more, given that, man for man, they probably came in with the strongest squad at this tournament. Instead they could only muster a draw against a Poland that had already been eliminated as of Matchday 2. For me, though, Belgium is the biggest disappointment - I understand that national teams can't just conjure a well-balanced squad out of thin air like Manchester City or Real Madrid, but the sense is that Belgium called up a lot of players who are past their sell-by date. I think the real injustice for Ukraine is that they couldn't beat this Belgium (though that means Ukraine probably wouldn't have done much in the knockouts; many of us are still scarred from Ukraine-Switzerland in 2006, one of the worst games ever).

As far as goals, this phase of the group stage had the fewest goals per game of any match day of the past three Euros tournaments, at 1.67. This wasn't helped by the fact that there were no fewer than three 0-0 draws on Matchday 3, more than in all of Euro 2020's group stage. This tournament had as many goalless draws as Euro 2016, which had four, but which distributed them better. I guess, after all the excitement of the first two rounds, this is when teams decided to be a little more cagey - or they just had more trouble finding the net, as evidenced by England, Italy, Belgium and others' travails.

The own goal chart, meanwhile, grew by only one, thanks to Donyell Malen's contribution against (or rather for) Austria. This means Own Goal is the highest scorer so far at Euro 2024, but less prolific than in the last tournament. Of course, if you're not scoring goals, that means there's less opportunity for own goals. Kind of a shame, if you think about it.

With regard to the knockouts, and how those will shake out: the fact that no big teams crashed out early means that they're all still there to play one another. Of course, one side of the draw has Spain, Germany, Portugal and France - none of them are drawn together in the Round of 16, but they'll face each other if they get through to the quarterfinals, until one of them will get to the final (I don't think this is getting too far ahead of myself, by the way, since these are the best teams in Europe).

England and Italy and the Netherlands are on the "easier" side of the draw, though if they beat their rivals as expected, they'll also whittle each other away until the final. I think the Netherlands can expect to make short work of Romania, but then they'd probably face Austria again in the quarters, and who knows how that'll end up. England, meanwhile, should also see off Slovakia, which will get them a quarter final against Italy or Switzerland, both of which should be doable. I hate to say it, but I'd be surprised to see Italy beat England, even this team that has no enterprise.

A final word about England. Everybody's disgusted with that 0-0 against Slovenia, and rightly so. But a lot of commentators and a lot of my friends (who aren't commentators) are really dismissive of Gareth Southgate. I keep reminding everyone that he has the best record of any England manager apart from Alf Ramsay, who actually won a tournament. That isn't to say that Southgate has no flaws, or that his team selection has been weird, but I think that's more not knowing wtf to do with big names who are injured or tired (Kane, Saka, Bellingham) but who insist on playing.

Frankly, Southgate's probably out of here after this tournament, and like Joe Biden, he's not going to win over the haters, so he might as well go down swinging. Because, also like Joe Biden, the other options aren't very enticing - though it should be noted that (hopefully) Eddie Howe or Graham Potter won't attempt to foment an insurrection and overthrow the British government. One can't be sure of Frank Lampard as England manager, but in his case I don't think it'd be malice so much as accident-prone-ness to an impressive degree.

Anywho: after today we get our first break from football in a couple of weeks. I'm kinda sad about that, but also kinda not, since it means not having to figure out ways to watch games at my desk or determine if they interfere with work calls. On the other hand, I can always tune into the Copa America, which should be fun, if not quite as close to my heart. Still, it'd be fun to see the USMNT do well.

Here's hoping to a good rest for all the players over these next couple of days, and to a bunch of surprising results in the knockouts!

Euro 2024: Matchday 2 Brings the Surprises

My last post talked about the lack of surprises, but that was written before all the teams had played one another even once. Now that each team has played two games, I figured it was time to see if any trends could be teased out yet.

The first is that Matchday 1 had the highest number of goals per game since the European Championships switched to this 24-team format. In 2016, teams were evidently cagier than they are now, because there were just 1.83 goals per game. By comparison, 2021 had 2.33 at the same period, and 2024 goes even better with 2.83 goals per game. The difference is 6 goals (28 in 2021 vs 34 in 2024), which comes from the fact that the opening game, Germany vs Scotland, registered five goals for Germany and one for Scotland, whereas one game in the opening match day in 2021 was a goalless draw.

There's a similar increase on Matchday 2 compared with previous tournaments, with 2.25 goals per game in both 2024 and 2021, against 2.08 in 2016. What's interesting there is that represents a decline on the first match day for the two most recent tournaments, but an increase in 2016.

I don't think I've heard anyone mention the amount of goals per game, but I suspect there are a couple of explanations. One is that the new format has made teams more willing to attack: because the four best third-placed teams go through, and goal difference is one of the key criteria for determining which four are considered the best, it creates an incentive for teams to go all-out. 

If that's the explanation, then it would be an example of football's governing bodies successfully pushing teams to play more aggressively. This is notable because previous initiatives included the "golden goal", whereby the first goal in extra time after 90 minutes would be the winning goal, and the "silver goal", where a goal in extra time didn't immediately end the game, but if it were the only goal in that period of extra time, then it would be the winning goal. 

The golden goal was intended to make teams more aggressive, but instead made them more defensive, because they knew that getting caught on the counter-attack would lose them the game, whereas they'd have more control of their own destiny if they held on until the penalty shootout. The silver goal rule was an attempt to soften this, but was soon abandoned because it also led to teams being more defensive.

On the other hand, it could be part of a wider trend in football toward playing a more attacking style. I haven't bothered to crunch the numbers to see how many goals per game have been scored at the World Cup or UEFA Champions League, but I suspect that in the latter case, at least the finals have become less goal-heavy affairs. Since the Champions League is undergoing a format change in the coming season, it may change the goals per game ratio there, but for now it's too early to tell.

The case for the increase being part of a wider change in football is still valid, however. The shift was underway already in 2016, but essentially the Dutch way of playing football, as filtered through the Barcelona academy, has taken over the European game. Given that pretty much all national sides are playing some form of this pressing or gegenpressing game, you don't see too many sides setting out to play ultra-defensive football like Greece in 2004.

Coming back to my comment about fewer surprises, there have now been a few. Romania roared out of nowhere to beat Ukraine 3-0, and then Slovakia beat Belgium 1-0, a result that everybody seems a little desperate to characterize as the biggest upset in Euros history. Some pundits have pointed out that it's such a big upset based on their FIFA rankings, which don't necessarily track as closely to their relative positions in UEFA, or indeed in qualifying for this tournament. But I suppose we can let them have this one.

Turkey vs Georgia wasn't a real shocker, but based on the highlights, it was an extraordinarily entertaining match. Group B in general was also rather entertaining in Matchday 2, though I was a little less enthused by Italy getting dominated so much by Spain. My first impression was that Italy set out to play for a draw, given that both had won their previous games and being on 4 points after the first two matches essentially guarantees getting to the knockout rounds. However, none of the pundits I listen to on Football Weekly or Totally Football suggested that, rather that Italy was so dominated by Spain that it's surprising the match ended only 1-0 (and that was an own goal).

Speaking of own goals, the podcasts have been talking a lot about how many there have been so far in the tournament. There have, indeed, been 6 so far, compared with 5 at this point in 2021 and 2 in 2016 (which were also the only own-goals in the group stage that year). I think this also stems from the tendency of teams to play more aggressively, which means more action in front of the goal face and more possibility for errors like Rüdiger's goal for Scotland or Calafiore's goal for Spain.

I seem to recall someone in a past tournament mentioning that it might have something to do with player tiredness, which sounds pretty likely, given how many games per season the top players are in. The third match day in 2021 featured 3 own goals, so it'll be interesting to see if that trend continues this year, or if the teams will be more cagey as they seek to secure their spots in the last 16.

None of the matchups in Matchday 3 strike me as classics in the making, but I'll obviously be watching Italy-Croatia very closely, hoping for a good result. On the one hand, I don't know that Italy has a great record against Croatia, but on the other, Croatia doesn't have a great record at the Euros. But after a string of decent performances, including winning the damn thing last time out, it'd be really disappointing to have Italy crash out at the group stage, like in 2004.

As far as winners for the whole thing, now that I've seen the teams in action, I think Germany and Spain are the teams that are playing the best. I haven't done the permutations to see if they'd meet before the final, but based on their form so far, whichever of them wins is likely to win the whole thing. France has been a bit disappointing, given that I thought (and still think) that they came into the tournament with the strongest squad, man-for-man, of any teams. England may still find their feet, but it seems a little less likely - I'm rather a big fan of Gareth Southgate and how he's finally gotten them all pulling in the same direction, but the match against Serbia felt a little bereft of ideas. That said, I think there was a lot of the same chat after England's 0-0 with Scotland last time out, and they ended up getting to the final.

As a final thought, it's a little early to tell who might go further than expected. The Euros, like any tournament, are dominated by the big teams, but not as much as the World Cup, and Portugal were the latest kind of unfancied side to win it, in 2016. I think a Greece-style upset is off the menu, though, because we haven't seen a big giant-killing performance like their group-stage win against Spain. 

At any rate, it's interesting that, going into the final round of group matches, only Poland has been definitely eliminated. This comes back to the point about teams going for it, since they can lose a game or draw all three and still progress. Here's hoping that Matchday 3 will be as good as what we've had so far!

Euro 2024: No Surprises, But A Couple of Early Alarms

It's back!

My second favorite tournament, the UEFA European Championships, have finally kicked off again. For the next month, I have a veritable feast of football awaiting me. I'm as giddy as Alan Partridge:

This means, of course, a bit of a respite from the usual superhero comics nonsense I've been posting here lately (unless something comes up). Instead, as I do every two years, I'll be doing a roundup of interesting thoughts from the most recent round of games. There will probably be stats and puns and ill-thought-out political commentary (also because, lucky us, the UK will hold its general election on July 4, smack dab in the middle of the tournament). So let's dive right in.

Overall, as I said in the title, there have been few surprises in the tournament so far. Just about every team that you'd expect to win has beaten its opponents, apart from Denmark, which led for most of its match against Slovenia, only to concede on 77 minutes. So far, that's the only draw we've had, but I'm sure before the group stage is out we'll have at least one dour 0-0.

Of the surprises that we have seen, they've fallen into two categories. The first is how dominant certain teams have been, specifically Germany and Spain. Germany in particular launched itself out of the starting block to thrash Scotland 5-1. Indeed, so hapless was Scotland in attack that their goal was scored by a German player who deflected into his own net. The talk before the tournament had been that Germany probably weren't ready, and no one knew where their goals were going to come from. 

Well, the answer is that if Germany weren't ready before Friday's curtain-raiser, they certainly are now. And as for goals, the answer is that everyone's going to pitch in: all of Germany's five goals were scored by different players across their attack. This may not hold up as they get further into the tournament, especially as they encounter stiffer resistance than Scotland, but it's a good basis to build upon.

A word for the Scots: I may have said Scotland was hapless, but the picture may become clearer as we go on. Did the scoreline reflect how good the Germans were, how bad the Scots were, or was it just a perfect storm? I'd like to think that Scotland haven't fielded a team of complete no-hopers, given that they beat Spain in qualifying.

Speaking of Spain, they were also more dominant against Croatia than I'd have expected. Croatia seems never to run out of batteries, given that their main players have 368 caps between them (Modric, Perisic, Brozovic), and indeed they bettered Spain's passing and possession. But despite that, Spain scored three unanswered goals, which puts them in pole position in the group and makes Croatia's task of qualifying as one of the better third-placed teams that much harder. Like with Germany, the scoreline was a bit of a surprise, and the big question is how they will cope with stronger opposition in the knockout stages.

The other kind of surprise is the freak goals scored by the weaker/losing teams. Slovenia's has to count as the most influential of those, since it gave them the tournament's only draw so far. But the most notable surprise goal has to be Albania's against Italy, scored just 23 seconds into the game.

The consensus on Football Weekly and Totally Football is that the Albanians scored too early, which gave Italy time to get back into the game and win it. While that narrative is quite similar to the Euro 2020 final, in which England scored early only for Italy to equalize and then win on penalties, it obscures that in yesterday's game against Albania the Italians went ahead 15 minutes later, and the game trundled on at 2-1 for Italy until the final whistle.

My usual worry with Italy is that we never know which version of the team will show up. Three years ago, they set out their stall with a 3-0 demolition of Turkey (whom everyone had designated dark horses that could nick a result), while in 2008 Italy demonstrated their prowess as reigning World Cup champions by losing with an abject 3-0 to the Netherlands. Yesterday's performance against Albania was somewhere between those two extremes, but edging toward the positive side, since they won.

Another team that made heavy weather of their opening win was, of course, England. Jude Bellingham scored the game's only goal in the 13th minute, and the remaining 77 minutes (plus injury time) saw Serbia mount attack after attack on the English goal, only to miss quite badly every time. England didn't look that together in attack either, though, which will be worrying for their fans as they contemplate the knockout stages.

That seems to be my most enduring refrain, but in fairness, this is still only the first round of group fixtures, and we haven't seen every team play yet. Germany has set out its stall as the team to beat, and it'll be interesting to see if they can maintain that momentum as they go on, but the party atmosphere - everyone's very consciously trying to recreate the joy of the 2006 World Cup - should help the home team. Spain has an exciting young team and should qualify with ease, though I'd still like them to lose to Italy.

In terms of teams we haven't seen play yet, I'm most intrigued by France and Portugal. France has, to my mind, the strongest squad, man-for-man, than anyone else at Euro 2024. They face Austria first, which could be tricky, but, all things being equal, I expect France to roll over the hapless Poland and the less hapless but not convincing Netherlands.

Portugal, on the other hand, have a mixture of old stalwarts (Cristiano Ronaldo, Pepe) and newer players, and it'll be interesting to see how they gel. Their group consists of Turkey, Georgia and the Czech Republic, which isn't easy per se, but is also not any kind of "group of death". I expect Portugal to qualify relatively easily, even if they have to repeat their feat from 2016 and qualify in third after drawing all three matches.

I'm also a bit interested to see how Belgium get on. They're in a group of meh, rather than a group of death, but they're also in a bit of a transitional phase, as their old golden generation falls away and is replaced by younger players who aren't quite as heralded, at least as yet. I expect them to get through fairly easily, with Ukraine joining them.

I won't be watching quite every match, since some start at 6am and others will interfere with work. But I aim to catch as many noon games as I can, aided by my new subscription to Sling TV for the duration. If you're looking for a streaming package to catch the games, it's the best overall option, even if it doesn't have five matches that will be exclusive to FuboTV. Those Fubo-exclusives tend to feature smaller teams, and the majority are at 6am (pacific time, at any rate), so I didn't bother.

In any case, this is always a fun time of year, and I'm hoping for a good tournament. If Italy don't win (which would be nice!) then I want to see some exciting, classic matches. Luckily, the Euros are usually good for that. Roll on the next four weeks!

Uncanny X-Men 700 and the End of Krakoa

This week, for the first time in about 20 years, I picked up a current issue of a comic. It was X-Men 35, or in Legacy Numbering, Uncanny X-Men 700, and it was intended as both the epilogue to the last five years of X-Men stories, and the intro to the coming era.

The reason I picked it up, rather than waiting a few months for it to appear on Marvel Unlimited, was that it felt important to grab an issue that was a milestone, both in terms of numbering and in terms of storytelling. For the former, I like the idea that X-Men has reached 700 issues, despite all the reboots over the past few decades. The original run of Uncanny ran, unbroken, from 1963 to 2011, with a few stints where it was bimonthly and then other periods when it would go biweekly during the summers, like a lot of Marvel titles did at the time. I consider it too bad that Marvel's been so ready to reboot titles to give collectors a number-one issue every couple of years - DC does it too, but it feels like Marvel's worse about it? I'll be better able to rule on this when I eventually subscribe to DC's app.

But I like the idea that, despite all the reboots and relaunches, and the thicket of "core" X-Men titles, Marvel is recognizing that its flagship and biggest seller for so many years has reached 700 issues.

In story terms, as I said, it's the epilogue to the Krakoan era, which kicked off in 2019 under Jonathan Hickman. It's actually a little silly of me to have bought it and read it now, since I'm still reading through the Krakoa stories; I've effectively jumped straight to the end of the story. But as I've said before, I don't mind spoilers so much, if I can still appreciate the journey to the end of the story. 

What I like about Hickman's work on X-Men is that it felt like an attempt to do something big and new and innovative with the book, something that hadn't really been seen since Grant Morrison's run on New X-Men, which ended 20 years ago. Like New X-Men, the House of X/Krakoa era wanted to introduce a new status quo and a new way of looking at X-Men stories - rather than purely superhero shenanigans, it would be a science fiction story with a dash of Game of Thrones. It would take everything that came before, throw it in a blender with some new ideas and some logical extremes for certain X-Men tropes from way back in the Chris Claremont era, and see what the result looked like.

The result looked like a mishmash of good stories and blah stories - and, if some of the commentary I've seen or heard on the internet is to be believed, some duff storytelling as they tried to wrap it all up. But it was also a story told with deep love and understanding of the characters and the themes they represent. By putting the traditional "good guys" and "bad guys" on the same side as they built the mutant nation of Krakoa, they found new ways to examine the motivations of many of these characters - I especially liked what they did with Apocalypse, who's generally been portrayed as one of the most evil mutants, but who hearkens back in this storyline to a comic from the 80s that seemed to cast his motivation (ensuring that the strong destroy the weak) as his own misguided way of protecting mutants.

Another thing I liked about the Krakoan era was that it kind of bridged the gap between the eras that I know and the stuff in between. Before I began my X-Men reread last November, I was familiar with bits of the early Claremont era, the Outback era, and the Blue and Gold team era, when the original five members returned to the team. I was also familiar with New X-Men, but didn't really know how to bridge the gap between that and what came before it. I also didn't really know anything about what came after it, apart from having looked at various issues here and there over the years.

Under Hickman's supervision, the creative teams found a use for almost all of the characters and teams I knew back in the 90s. They also managed to update them while also filling in some gaps but also being faithful to the way the characters were back in the 80s or 90s. One example is the New Mutants: characters like Cannonball and Wolfsbane have clearly moved on from their confusion and angst as teenagers, but their newly confident versions feel organic and earned. 

I could say the same for characters like Scott Summers and Jean Grey, about whom I go back and forth: sometimes I think they're Marvel's greatest and most enduring pairing (even more than Reed Richards and Sue Storm), other times I think they need distance from one another. Whichever way I feel about their relationship at any given time, the comics of the last few years (which, incidentally, I've only started reading in the last six months) have looked at the relationship from both those angles.

Speaking of relationships, the main tone of the X-books under Hickman was one of joy, and nowhere more so than in depicting queer relationships, but also exploring friendships among various characters that haven't been thrown together before. In other shows and books, it sometimes feels like the woke stuff is shoehorned in, but (apart from one or two cases) here it all felt organic. That's important for the X-Men, in particular: because the theme of the book has always been about outsiders and found family, it has acted as a stand-in for all kinds of social justice causes. Apparently, back in the 70s and 80s and 90s, Chris Claremont wanted to depict queer relationships in the X-books, but editorial prohibited it, so it feels like justice that the current teams have managed to introduce a lot of those stories that he pioneered - my favorite being the revelation that Mystique is not Nightcrawler's mother, but rather (thanks to her shapeshifting powers) his father.

There were things I didn't love about the Krakoan era. For all that I liked the emphasis on celebrating mutant culture and getting everyone on side, I would have liked to see the "hated and feared" part sidelined more. Around the time I started rereading my old X-books, I had this idea of giving the X-Men the "Star Trek treatment", i.e. depicting a true utopia where mutants are accepted and live in peace alongside humans. When I first heard of Krakoa, I thought Hickman was doing just that, but instead he maintained the idea that the humans would continue to stop at nothing to eradicate the mutants.

I don't want to claim that this is unrealistic, because every advance in social justice in real life consists of steps forward and steps back. You see this in race relations and LGBTQ+ issues. But I was hoping that we could see more of a cooling off, just as a way to show how a better world is possible.

Also, the main anti-mutant faction, Orchis, didn't seem to have much motivation beyond hating mutants. They felt nihilistic rather than well-rounded - which makes sense given that Mr Sinister was a key player in Orchis. But when I say nihilistic, I mean that the violence inflicted on the mutants during these years feels excessive - Orchis built space stations around the sun and colonized moons of Mars, all in a bid to eradicate mutants, but somehow it just never felt organic to their characters.

There were also a couple of books that petered out, despite having started strongly. In one case, it felt like a showcase for a queer relationship that, when I initially read about it, felt like a good idea, but in practice felt like a slog to read and the writer didn't seem to have much sense of either of the participants' personalities. This was disappointing because the book in question started out as a compelling read, addressing a lot of character arcs that were fun.

(BTW I'm purposely not naming the books because I don't want to be associated with the bad-faith trolls who talk shit about everything these writers do)

But enough about the negatives. Krakoa was all about joy and celebration, which is in short supply in comics in general, let alone the famously angsty X-Men. Like Chris Claremont and Grant Morrison, Jonathan Hickman aimed for the fences with his time on the books, and mostly hit home runs. Excalibur, Hellions, Marauders, New Mutants - these are the books I've read the most, and thought they were wonderful, full of good characterization and fun.

I wish some of the structural issues, like Orchis, had been addressed, so that we could have had it last longer. I worry that the coming "From the Ashes" era is going back to how the X-books were between Claremont and Morrison's runs, but I also appreciate the creators that have been hired to steer the books in the next few years. I may wait a little to pick those up, so that I can catch up with the rest of Krakoa, but I hope that the X-Men books are properly back, and won't be subject to a set of wilderness years like they did after Claremont left and again after Morrison left.

And I hope, one day, to be able to write my own chapter in the X-saga. That'd be fun, wouldn't it?

Champions League 2024: The Same Old Faces Win Again

After Real Madrid's victory yesterday in the Champions League final, over Borussia Dortmund, the football podcasts I listen to have pointed out that this is Real's sixth win in the last 11 seasons, making for their fifteenth European Cup/Champions League overall. This is especially impressive when you consider that their previous run of six wins ended in 2002, but began in 1959, four years into their five-year streak of winning the competition (which was also, incidentally, the first five years that the European Cup was held).

You might say, correctly, that Real Madrid has gotten better at this competition. Indeed, during these past 11 years, they won it three years in a row, a feat that was last accomplished by Bayern Munich (1974-76), Ajax (1971-73) and Real itself (1956-60).

But there's a bigger picture, namely that the pool of winners has shrunk since the 1990s, and Real is just the most successful of these big-name winners. To put it another way, 2024 marks the 20th year in a row that a club from one of Europe's top four leagues (England, Germany, Italy and Spain) has won the Champions League. In that time, a club from outside those top four countries has reached the final just once (Paris-St. Germain in 2020, losing to Bayern Munich). Spain has won 10 of those 20 titles, compared with 6 for England, 2 each for Germany and Italy, and none for France (which, as I've said, may be numerically the fifth-strongest league but is nowhere near the top four).

By contrast, the previous 20-year period, 1985 to 2004, saw European Cup/Champions League winners from nine countries: the top four, plus France (1), Netherlands (2), Portugal (2), Romania (1) and Yugoslavia (1). In that period, the most successful country was Italy (6), followed by Spain (4), Germany/West Germany (2) and England (1). 

England's performance is slightly skewed by the fact that English clubs were banned from Europe following the Heysel disaster in 1985. Prior to that, English clubs had won six seasons in a row between 1977 and 1982, and then again in 1984.

Looking at runners up, the picture between 1985 and 2004 is similar. Of the 20 clubs that played in a final but lost, six were from Italy, followed by four from Spain and three from Germany. England (1) and France (2) supplied the remaining runners up from the top leagues, along with Portugal (2), Romania (1) and the Netherlands (1).

Part of the reason for this skew toward the top four leagues is the fact that the Champions League began allowing multiple teams from certain countries in the 1997-98 season. Those leagues with the highest coefficients in the competition could have more teams enter, which allowed them more chances to improve their coefficient and further entrench themselves in the Champions League, at the expense of smaller (and generally poorer) leagues. To put it another way, before 1998 it was impossible for two clubs from the same country to meet in the final, but it's since happened eight times, of which six have been in the last 20 years.

The common refrain I hear when I bring this up is that people want to see the powerhouses play one another in the Champions League, and they don't care about seeing the champions of the Czech Republic or Romania or whoever. This may be true - but given that Steaua Bucharest reached the final twice in the 80s, it's conceivable that Romania's strongest club was competitive with the best of the continent and would have drawn more eyeballs than it would now. To me, this imbalance is more attributable to the fact that all the money and good players have gone to Western Europe and to the top four leagues in particular since the 1990s.

This situation isn't set to change anytime soon. Indeed, the Champions League is moving to a different format next season, which is a little too convoluted to describe here (I simply don't understand how it'll work), but the upshot is that the two leagues with the best performances will get an extra slot. What's more, depending on how participants shake down into their respective leagues, a single country could even have up to six teams in the competition.

These changes come in every couple of years as UEFA's rearguard action against the threat of a breakaway European Super League, like the one proposed in 2021. The biggest clubs want a guaranteed place in the competition, regardless of how well they actually play, and so whenever they threaten to break away, UEFA rejigs the Champions League to accommodate them. This way they've effectively managed to turn the competition into its own closed shop, untroubled by the great unwashed except for those times that one of said great unwashed actually wins their league (e.g. Leicester City in 2016).

England great Gary Lineker once said that football's a simple game: 22 men run around the pitch for 90 minutes and at the end the Germans win. The same is true of the Champions League, except substitute Real Madrid for "the Germans". This trend is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, since the other European finals featured at least one team from the Big 4: Atalanta beat Bayer Leverkusen in the Europa League, while Olympiacos beat Fiorentina in the Europa Conference League. That latter result is a welcome trophy for a non Big 4 team (indeed, Greece's first European club trophy), but the fact is that they beat a Big 4 team to it.

For another look at the future of the competition, think of this: Real Madrid's seen a lot more success since  it ended its galactico policy of buying all the superstars it could find, and instead started building proper teams with depth. Imagine how successful PSG will be when it inevitably does the same?