Triumphant in Leipzig
©TM/IMAGO
Despite some football fans in England always blindly claiming that the Premier League boasted the highest-quality in the world, there was a period where that certainly was not the case on the European stage. Between 2014 and 2018, Spanish teams won the Champions League for five seasons in-a-row, with two of those finals being all LaLiga affairs. Four of the five Europa League winners in that timeframe were also Spanish. Premier League teams were struggling to lay a glove at Europe’s top table. However, fast forward a decade and times have changed.
The Premier League has been aggressively outspending every other league for sometime now, but their clubs have now also started spending smart, and it’s starting to have a serious impact on the continent. Aston Villa have already won this season’s Europa League and Crystal Palace have secured the UEFA Conference League, Arsenal can complete English dominance with a victory over Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League final on Saturday.
It is now more than feasible that all three European winners could be English, which would be the first time that all three European Cup winners resided from the same nation since the 1989-90 season, when the all-conquering AC Milan side won the European Cup, Sampdoria bagged the Cup Winners Cup, and Juventus won the UEFA Cup. So is the Premier League really having a much bigger impact in Europe this decade than it did in the previous one? Here at Transfermarkt, we have crunched the numbers and compared English sides record in Europe in the 2010s and the 2020s to see if this season is a theme or simply a fluke.
English teams in Europe – 2010s and 2020s compared
As illustrated in the graphic above, in the 2010s (between seasons 2009/10 to 2018/19) only five English teams tasted European glory. Chelsea won the Champions League in 2011/12, and then the Europa League in 2012/13 and 2018/19, where they beat London rivals Arsenal in the final. Manchester United won the Europa League in 2016/17 under José Mourinho, whilst Liverpool won the Champions League in 2018/19, when Jürgen Klopp’s team beat Tottenham in the final. Five wins across a decade across two competitions is nothing to be ashamed of, but it certainly doesn’t pose dominance.
Now, as highlighted in the latest graphic above, English teams have already surpassed the whole of the 2010s in the last six years, winning a European trophy six times. However, it should be noted, that the Europa Conference League was only introduced in 2021, which obviously allows an extra opportunity for a trophy, which has been taken by West Ham (2022/23) and Chelsea (2024/25). Nevertheless, English teams have also still won either the Champions League or Europa League four times in that period – Chelsea (2020/21) and Manchester City (2022/23) won the Champions League, whilst Tottenham won the Europa League last season and Aston Villa did this term.
If we now compare the two decades in terms of the hit-rates from English teams, we can see a stark contrast – even if you take into account the added factor of the Conference League. In the 2010s, English teams were averaging 0.50 European winners a season and 1.10 European finalists a season. So far in the 2020s, Premier League sides have averaged 1.17 winners and 2.00 finalists per season. Should Arsenal then also win the Champions League, it would jump to 1.33 winners a season. It perhaps should be somewhat expected given the vast amounts of money spent, but it’s almost impossible to argue against the Premier League being the best league in the world right now.
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