Premier League teams dominant in the Champions League

In the past four seasons, the Premier League has 9 of 16 champions league semi-finalists, five of finalists and two of winners while Spain three semi-finalists, Italy two and Netharland one. The Premier League has become fairly and incontrovertibly the dominant force in Europe at the moment.

These results of Premier League teams are because of variuos television deals, huge attendance figures and marketing potential combine to make the Premier League the richest in the world even while the first and third richest clubs in the world are Real Madrid Barcelona while Manchester United comes second and Chelsea, Arsenaland Liverpool fifth, sixth and seventh. Money has allowed English club to bring in specialists. The great difference between English clubs and Italian or Spanish clubs now is not the native players but the quality of the imports. Players transfer fees as a whole have dropped since 2001 when Zidane moved to Real Madrid but the four biggest moves since 2004 have all been to English clubs. Foreign players and coaches have brought new ideas and while the Premier League's big four all play in diffeenrt ways but a general balance seems to have been achieved between physicality and technique.

Perhaps the biggest advanatge English clubs have is that for the past five seasons, the same four clubs have qualified for the Champions League. That gives English sides greater financial clout, a greater sense of security and a greater experience of European competition.

Assessing relative competiveness is hugely problematic, not because there are many competitons with the same league title. In the past decade only two teams have become European champions while coasting to their league title. Unfortunatley two teams have won the Champions League in the past decade knowing long before the season ended that they would not win their league. Champions League has been won by a team that kept battling until the end of the season. Manchester United's two Champions League title comes along with Premier League title in the same seasons. The other three seasons, Premier League was won by team struggling to qualify for the following season's Champions League. Local league titles no longer give validation, it is magnified.