When was European club football at its best?

Physiocrat

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In which time periods did European club football have the best mix of quality, entertainment and competitiveness?

By European club football I mean competitions like the European Cup, Champions League, UEFA Cup, Europa League etc.
 
Regarding competitiveness, several years ago I did a quick tally up for another thread of how many times clubs from each country reached the Euro/Uefa/Cup winners semi-finals from 70s to 2010's. From what I remember the variety was similar for '70s and '80s, a notch or two down in the '90s, then falls off a cliff for '00s and '10s. I'm guessing that if I had looked at it from the Quarter-final stage it would have been even more lopsided between this century and last.

Without going back into pre-European Cup times, I'd say that the late '50s to late '80s is the period where you could take enough different league champions for any given year and make a 10-18 team league without any obvious "will barely get any points and never get over 30% possession" punching bags. After that, by the 90s we start getting too much consolidation of talent in Serie A with its numerous unsustainably high spending sugar daddies, plus the eastern/central euro league breakups and smaller leagues in general start to drop off. Maybe you could still do it up until bosman ruling or thereabouts. By late '00s...games gone.

Talent and entertainment is too subjective.
 
Just looking at the winners it seems to me the 60s, 80s and 90s were the most competitive. In the 50s and 70s you have a number of back to back winners such as Ajax and Real.

If I was to pick a time period it would probably be the 90s for quality, entertainment and competitivess although that could just be nostalgia.

Do you know when Serie A increased the number of allowed foreign players per XI beyond 3?
 
If we went back to old system(which was much better) that only Champions play in the tournament and make it a knockout from day 1.....would top players move to lets say Benfica, Ajax and those clubs rather then play for top 3, 4 clubs in top leagues?
 
Šjor Bepo said:
If we went back to old system(which was much better) that only Champions play in the tournament and make it a knockout from day 1.....would top players move to lets say Benfica, Ajax and those clubs rather then play for top 3, 4 clubs in top leagues?
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It would take a while for that kind of shift to happen, and I don't think it reverses the trend entirely. What created the stratification we see now is that the new format kept allowing the bigger leagues to create more and more of a financial advantage over everyone else by accumulating all that Champions League money. Even if you take away that advantage, you're not giving the Dutch or Portuguese leagues the opportunity to stockpile in a similar way (and develop similar worldwide popularity and prestige), as they won't have decades of their top three or four clubs getting into the Champions League. Not to mention, the gap is so wide now that you'd probably still see the top clubs from the bigger leagues mostly winning even with the reduced odds.
 
prolifik said:
It would take a while for that kind of shift to happen, and I don't think it reverses the trend entirely. What created the stratification we see now is that the new format kept allowing the bigger leagues to create more and more of a financial advantage over everyone else by accumulating all that Champions League money. Even if you take away that advantage, you're not giving the Dutch or Portuguese leagues the opportunity to stockpile in a similar way (and develop similar worldwide popularity and prestige), as they won't have decades of their top three or four clubs getting into the Champions League. Not to mention, the gap is so wide now that you'd probably still see the top clubs from the bigger leagues mostly winning even with the reduced odds.
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ohh it would most likely be shambles short term but on the long run surely the CL as the biggest club prize in the game would tempt players to leave your Arsenal, Spurs, Dortmund, Atletico etc. for historically big clubs that play CL football most seasons. No idea but something needs to be changed and the changes that are happening are going from bad to worse sadly....
 
Šjor Bepo said:
ohh it would most likely be shambles short term but on the long run surely the CL as the biggest club prize in the game would tempt players to leave your Arsenal, Spurs, Dortmund, Atletico etc. for historically big clubs that play CL football most seasons. No idea but something needs to be changed and the changes that are happening are going from bad to worse sadly....
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I guess it might shift things a bit more in that direction, but it's the money more than anything else that attracts those players, and that imbalance was created over decades. If we're being honest though, a change like this would probably reduce the popularity of the Champions League and make it less lucrative - in fact, it would almost certainly make the bigger leagues even more popular now that I think about it. :lol: UEFA has been pushing things in this direction for so long that I'm not sure how you reverse the effects at this point.
 
I don't know, all I know is that I really miss early 2000's Champions League football.
 
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