The better analogy would be the PL is the Western conference while the rest of Europe is like the Eastern conference.
The relative strength of the Premier League
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The better analogy would be the PL is the Western conference while the rest of Europe is like the Eastern conference.
I think the issue with the PL is that it does not produce enough top talent. If it has to be imported, there'll be a lag due to needing to identify it elsewhere. That's a bigger issue for managers than players.
If Klopp and Guardiola leave the PL and are replaced by the next two "best managers of their generation" then congrats to the PL, but I'm guessing that isn't what's going to happen.
Most of the best young players in the world are in the Prem surely?
But given the money available in the PL and its status as the most lucrative and arguably competitive league in the world, why wouldn't it? You'd have thought that city and Liverpool would, unfortunately, be right at the top of any manager's aspirational shortlist, no?
Used to be that the other leagues had a competitive advantage of being able to rest players for European competition because they play dross most weeks. Now even that advantage is diminishing season by season.
Living in the past with this comment. England are producing stars rapidly hence the improvement in the national team.
If there are a catalogue of better under 21’s in any other league that match Foden, Saka, Smith Rowe, Greenwood, Ramsey, Lamptey, etc I’d like to see it.
It's far past time that Uefa should have monetised these fan debates and creating further fixture congestion with full league vs league confrontations. A certain amount of times a season, the teams from the top five leagues battle it out against their positional equivalents 1st vs 1st, 2nd vs 2nd or some shit like that...the winners takes home the coveted Strongest League bragging rights. Time to get everyone involved. Could have a Europa League equivalent for the 6-10/12 ranked leagues and even a conference version too.
Sounds really cool
For starters, because we don't know who those managers are.
This doesn't make sense. Your post says it's unlikely that Klopp and Pep are unlikely to be replaced by the next two managers of their generation. What does us not knowing who they are have to do with whether or not they will be?
Mmmm. Define "young".
Mbappé, Haaland, Sancho, Vinicius, Foden, Pedri, Bellingham, Gavi, Camavinga, TAA would make most people's best young players in the world top 10 i imagine. Only 3 of them in the PL
It goes to my earlier point about there being a lag due to the PL not producing internally as well as they should.
Guardiola made his name outside of the PL. So did Klopp. They were proven names because under Guardiola, Barcelona dominated in Europe, and under Klopp, Dortmund won titles and made it to a CL final against another German team. Those were periods of domination for Spanish and German sides.
The PL has enough money to hire the next Guardiola, but the next Guardiola is probably going to come from another league, where he'll dominate European football. So that'll be a period where the PL is not dominant.
If Manchester City or Chelsea or whoever can actually produce the next great manager then that's a different story. But so far they haven't.
I take your point but don't think that it's a given at all that the next Klopp, Guardiola etc will dominate European football before a move. Klopp never dominated European football, after all. Guardiola worked with one of the best sides ever and won an enormous amount domestically but also didn't really dominate European football. My bet is that they'll draft in the next big thing in the vein of ETH or Nagelsmann, so I definitely don't think guardiola and Klopp leaving will mean that the prem is stuck with a dearth of top class managers or coaches.
Premier League is the strongest league clearly and it's something everyone saw coming just because of the money in the league. Then this things can change in sort of cycles and the truth is other leagues keep producing good talent and no matter how much money premier league clubs have they can't hoard all the best prospects as some of them will still value development and play time.
Because things never last, and the current will change. Most people thought Serie A was always going to be dominant and the PL was considered a huge step down. This was in the 90's and early 2000's, things can change drastically over a few decades. The PL will have their golden era, but things always find a way to balance themselves out. As it stands, Real Madrid and Barcelona are still huge draws, the two great talents in Mbappe and Haaland seem to both want to go play there, and most of the biggest talents in South America and parts of Europe still dream of the Spanish clubs over the English ones and that won't change anytime soon. Also, I think the PL's biggest advantage isn't necessarily the money they've generated but the coaches they've attracted, mainly in Klopp and Pep. You take those two managers out of the equation (and their team), the rest of the PL and its coaching/players isn't really giving any kind of vibes of some unstoppable and superior league at all. We know Pep will leave soon, I don't know about Klopp, but beyond those two there's nothing to suggest dominance from a PL side over Europe long-term.
This was true in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. But not anymore, because the money in the EPL are growing exponentially and eclipsing those of other leagues. Coaches and players will find success in other leagues first. Great coaches will still be groomed in Germany, and great South American players will still go to Spain and Italy first. However, if the salary and infrastructure are too good to be true, they will still come to Premier League eventually, instead of going to Real Madrid or Barcelona. If you ask me in the early 2000s, it would be unthinkable for Chelsea, Man City, and even struggling giants like United and Spurs to go and knock on the doors of Inter and Real Madrid for players or coaches, such as prime Adriano, Walter Samuel, or Carlo Ancelotti. Chelsea buying Inter's top scorer in Lukaku and Serie A winning coaches like Conte and Ancelotti being willing to go to even Spurs and Everton are already signs of how the growing financial prowess of PL clubs are making them bolder, thus making them more and more dominant.
Yes - I think unfortunately some of us have been mentioning this for years. I wished that as it was happening the fans who were blinkered enough to deny it had noticed it as we could have tried to level out the playing field.
That players will eventually pick the PL over Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern or PSG remains to be seen
As it stands, the two best young players in the world appear spain-bound...
As it stands, the two best young players in the world appear spain-bound...
When was the last time player picked a PL team over Real Madrid or Barcelona? I don't remember tbh.
Bayern is out of discussion as they rarely go for players that are under the radar of PL teams.
Tbh as great as Ancelotti is, Everton didn't go for peak Ancelotti, he was past their peak when they got him.
Peak Ancelotti would have never managed Everton, same with Mourinho and Spurs, and i don't think anybody would say that Roma got Mourinho because of the financial power of current Serie A.
The case of Conte is valid as he is still at his prime.
And it is not like Everton took him from a job in Italy. He was fired by Napoli first. Obviously Everton will always have more money than the 7th/8th of any other European league. But I don't think a top manager would willingly leave a top 6 team in those leagues to join a lower placed side in England just for the money.
By the way in the same period Ancelotti and Mourinho were taking over Spurs and Everton we had Ramsey (Arsenal's POTY 2018) and Eriksen (at his peak with Spurs) choosing to leave the PL for Italy (arguably the "financially poorest" league of the top 4), Eriksen at the time was one of PL's most valued players and top PL clubs wanted him. These 2 examples are interesting because they are not Balkan or Latinos. They are not choosing south Europe for the lifestyle.
The PL has been richer than the other 4 leagues for 15 years at least and still the very elite seems to be playing for Bayern, Barça and Real. Juventus was close to them but seems on the way down. And nowadays PSG is joining that trio, maybe momentarily replacing Barcelona for financial reasons. Either way these 3 are such big clubs with such large fanbaes that hey will always have enough pull.
Mbappe and Haaland you mean?
United's troubles paint the relative strength of the Premier League in an interesting light.
We're absolutely awful - arguably the worst United side in decades - and yet we're still in with an outside chance of a European spot. Perhaps the Premier League isn't as strong as it is made out to be.
We're absolutely awful - arguably the worst United side in decades - and yet we're still in with an outside chance of a European spot. Perhaps the Premier League isn't as strong as it is made out to be.
I still think the Premier League was at its strongest in 2007-2008.
You could argue the best 4 teams in the world were in the Prem that year. If your counter argument is that Europe's other giants were weak at the time, you can present that same argument now.
But the Premier League now is definitely way stronger than it was say in 2016. That was a truly tumescent year for the Prem.
I think that the PL has 2 of their best teams ever while there are no really great teams out in Europe right now. If Europe wasn't weak the PL would look more like a big 2 since other teams in the PL are not historically great to me. I don't think Chelsea are like Atletico Madrid either because they had a 4 year stretch were they knocked out super strong Bayern and Barca teams in CL and won La Liga. I think when the other great leagues and teams rebound that we will see that PL is a more of a big 2 than a super league.
The issue IMO is that we tend to look at the results of the European Cup competitions, and if PL teams are doing well, we say the PL is the best league in the world (e.g. in 2008 and now). If PL teams are not doing as well as (say) La Liga (which was clearly the case for a decade plus) then we still say the PL is the best league in the world. So that just proves that people see whatever they want to see when it comes to assessing the strength of different leagues. It doesn't help that most people don't watch other leagues all that much.
Some things are undeniable, like the fact that the Premier League is the richest league. There's facts and figures to prove that. But the Premier League has always been the richest league, at least for a long time now. It didn't stop Spain from winning 6 out of 10 CLs in the 2010s (with 2 All-Spanish finals during that run) and 6 of 10 Europa Leagues in the same period (7 of 11 if you count last year, with an All-Spanish final in that run as well).
If the Premier League had that kind of dominance over a 10 year period, PL fans would be declaring the competitions dead and demanding that other leagues raise the white flag and stop wasting everybody's time.
If you want to argue that the riches gap is growing due to the pandemic and this will lead to endless PL dominance, then I think we need to see a bit more evidence, other than just the last couple of years when England has overtaken Spain as the number one league in the coefficient after a decade of Spain being at the top.
My guess is that City, Liverpool and Chelsea are really good at the moment because they have the best managers in the world and have given them money to spend (which is where the riches comes in handy). We've seen City without Pep, it's not the same dominance. We've seen Liverpool without Klopp. And does anyone think Chelsea were going to win the CL under Lampard?
Exactly. The bias to English Football is overwhelming. I remember when LaLiga were dominating European football, the excuses I would hear from Premier League fans is that the premier league was so tough so the English teams had no energy to compete in Europe. Those excuses have somehow mysteriously stopped. The truth is the league is "stronger" because Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp and now Thomas Tuchel are bringing in fresh ideas and raising the coaching level of the league to a level that it had never seen before.
Gary Neville did an interesting video on it. When you marry money, structure and elite coaching together, this is the inevitable result.
Well what we do see in Europa league and Conference league is that it is very even under the top. Spurs for example got knocked out of an easy group.
Leicester ended third in Europa league. Barcelona failed vs Frankfurt. Roma lost 7-1 to Bodö Glimt.
Premier league is probably the strongest league, but Getafe vs Burnley is a fairly even game I say.
Leicester ended third in Europa league. Barcelona failed vs Frankfurt. Roma lost 7-1 to Bodö Glimt.
Premier league is probably the strongest league, but Getafe vs Burnley is a fairly even game I say.
PL teams have a combined record of like 40 wins, 10 draws and 10 losses in Euope this season...
Pretty much right in line with what La Liga was doing in the 13/14-16/17 period....
Pretty much right in line with what La Liga was doing in the 13/14-16/17 period....
The quality of the Premier league is really poor outside of the top 3. I base this purely on the fact we are still within touching distance of 4th, despite being utterly crap all season
Really good thread here.
Well, actually, that was mostly to do with no winter break. There is a winter break now and English clubs have been doing better. It might be that the 'excuse' was actually a real issue.
Also, the English teams do have an additional cup competition compared to others in Europe. So, it is not really an excuse but more reality.
Depends how you see it. We are no longer in touching distance of 4th, and we only have +2 goal difference in the league this season, which is same as 14th place Crystal Palace.
In fact thats what’s the league table says this season:
Top 1-2: City, Liverpool (79-80)
Top 3: Chelsea (65)
Top 4-5: Arsenal, Spur (58-60)
Top 6-8: Man Utd, West Ham, Wolves (49-54)
Top 9-15: (37-43)
Top 16-18: (29-33)
Top 19-20: (21-22)
We only belong to 4th tier among top 6-8. West Ham and Wolves can still finish this season higher than us. You may even argue if not Ronaldo/De Gea won/save us many points individually, we would probably be lying in mid-table (top 9-15), as per our collective team performance.
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This post is from January and one of these players' careers didn't even make it through that month.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with their footballing ability..? Bizarre post.
It has everything to do with the need to gloat about the superiority of the PL based on short-term results. Does Bukayo Saka look like a better player than Jack Wilshere and Aaron Ramsey once did?
For me he does personally.
Outside of Liverpool and City the PL is pretty crap right now in my opinion. Sure there's still a lot of money being thrown about but there doesn't seem to be a lot of rewards reaped for the money being spent.
Look at how terrible we are and yet we are very close to the top four. Same with Arsenal.
Look at how terrible we are and yet we are very close to the top four. Same with Arsenal.
So fans shouldn't get excited about emerging youth prospects for fear of coming across as gloating? Get over yourself. La Liga had a period when it was the superior league, as did Serie A, now it is patently the PL. Why people get so touchy about this, I'll never know.The only thing that needs to change is the BL should apply an equal share of TV broadcast revenue between all clubs, rather than the larger share going to the bigger clubs, similar to what it is in the EPL. That would go a long way to reduce disparity.
Another thing which the writer for some reason doesn't mention is that Covid hit the BL a lot more than other leagues because 1) They had lockdowns for longer than other leagues, it's only now that BL clubs have been allowed to have full capacity while the EPL had full capacity from the start of this season and 2) Due to 50+1, they can't get bailouts from their rich owners.