Is Premier League Domination Bad For The Champions League?

After Bayern Munich beat Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday night, Vincent Kompany revealed he made a point of telling his players that they “are not that good” in an effort to keep them grounded.

The task could prove somewhat more difficult after the Bavarian beat the Champions League holders in Paris 2-1 courtesy of two goals from Luis Diaz to go top of the table at the halfway stage of the league phase.

Arsenal and Inter Milan are the only two teams other than Bayern to still have a perfect record in the competition after four rounds of matches.

For all of Kompany’s caution, it would be difficult to argue Bayern aren’t the best team in Europe right now.

The Bavarians have won nine out of nine in the Bundesliga scoring 33 goals and conceding just four, while their four Champions League wins have come to the tune of 14 goals scored against three conceded.

And yet, while Bayern’s win in Paris was a statement victory, there was arguably an even bigger winner from the fourth round of Champions League fixtures.

Namely, the Premier League.

For the second time this season, five English clubs won in the same round of fixtures.

Arsenal strolled to a 3-0 win in Prague against Slavia to remain joint top of the table, while Tottenham rebounded from a loss to Chelsea on Saturday by thrashing Copenhagen 4-0 at home.

Liverpool beat Real Madrid 1-0 at Anfield on Tuesday night, while Newcastle and Manchester City dispatched Athletic Club and Borussia Dortmund 2-0 and 4-1 respectively a day later.

Chelsea were the only English side not to win, drawing 2-2 in Azerbaijan against Qarabag.

For context, before this season never had five teams from the same nation won in a single round of matches in European football’s biggest competition.

The Premier League has now done it twice.

How Premier League clubs are dominating in Europe

By contrast, Atletico Madrid were the only of five Spanish teams to win this week, with Real Madrid, Athletic Club and Villarreal all losing.

Bayern and Bayer Leverkusen flew the flag for the Bundesliga winning their respective fixtures, while Eintracht Frankfurt drew and Dortmund were dispatched by City.

Inter Milan and Atalanta were the only two Italian sides to win, as Juventus and Napoli were both held to a draw at home, while Monaco were the only Ligue 1 representative to win with PSG and Marseille both losing at home.

Halfway through the league phase, four of the eight spots that warrant automatic qualification to the Round of 16 are occupied by English teams.

Arsenal are off top spot only by virtue of scoring fewer goals than Bayern, with City two points behind their rivals in fourth place, followed by Newcastle and Liverpool a point further behind.

Tottenham and Chelsea sit 10th and 12th with eight and seven points respectively, but are just one and two points adrift of the top eight places.

It does not take a great leap of faith to imagine all six English clubs could qualify directly for the Round of 16 come January.

Back in 2017, the Premier League became the first league to have five teams in the knockout stages of the competition as City, Liverpool, Tottenham, Chelsea and Manchester United all progressed.

Of the quintet, however, only Liverpool and City reached the quarter-finals, with the Reds knocking out their rivals in the last eight en route to reaching the final, which they ultimately lost to Real Madrid.

Ominously for their European counterparts, English clubs look again set to monopolise the knockout stages.

Between them, the Premier League representatives have played 24 games, winning 17 and losing just three times, scoring 56 goals and conceding just 17 in the process.

Those three defeats have come against Bayern Munich and Barcelona, who beat Chelsea 3-1 and Newcastle 2-1 back in September, while Liverpool lost 1-0 to Galatasaray in Istanbul.

The Premier League teams have a 71 percent winning rate in the Champions League this season, by far the best of any of the top five European leagues.

The Bundesliga is second with a 50 percent rate, followed by Serie A and Ligue 1 at 44 and 42 percent respectively, with LaLiga bottom of the table with a 40 percent win rate.

The figures continue the trend that has seen the Premier League produce three Champions League winners in the past decade, two of which emerged from all English-finals with Liverpool beating Tottenham in 2019 and Chelsea prevailing over City two years later.

Liverpool also reached the final in 2018 and 2022, losing to Real Madrid in both occasions.

Premier League flexes its financial muscles

And yet there is nothing unexpected about the Premier League’s dominance at a continental level, for the English top-flight operates on a different financial level from the rest of the world.

Premier League clubs spent a record £3.11bn ($4.16bn) on players this summer, a 55 percent year-on-year increase.

To put the figure into context, Serie A was next with £896.4m ($1.2bn), while German clubs splurged a combined £563.7m ($754.7m) on players and the spending in Spain came in at £500.3m ($700m).

Ligue 1 clubs, meanwhile, forked out £475.9m ($637m) on players, slightly more than Liverpool spent on their own this summer.

The financial disparity between the Premier League and the rest of Europe owes largely to the enormous difference in the value of TV rights.

According to UEFA’s European Club Finance and Investment Landscape report, Premier League clubs earned an average of £142m ($187m) in TV rights alone last year, more than double than LaLiga’s £60m ($79m) average.

Bundesliga clubs clubs pocketed an average of £53m ($69.7m), with the figure dropping to £48m ($63.2m) and £22m ($28.9m) in Serie A and Ligue 1 respectively.

As a result of their success in Europe, England’s collective club coefficient rose to 100.227 on Wednesday, comfortably clear of Italy’s and Spain’s at 88.658 and 82.578 respectively.

The club coefficient may not be the most glamorous aspect of European football, but it is also crucial as it is what UEFA – European football’s regulatory body – uses to determine how many spots a particular country is granted into UEFA competitions.

In layman’s terms that means that the more successful the Premier League is in Europe, the bigger the chances of it being granted at least five spots in the Champions League.

In turn that means more teams from Europea’s richest league being allowed to benefit from the riches of European football’s premier competition.

If modern football is an arms race, the Premier League are bringing heaving armoury to a conflict against the proverbial pea shooter.

Worryingly for UEFA, there is no easy solution in sight.