In one of cinema’s most quoted lines, the path to power runs through money. In modern football, the Premier League has certainly nailed the first part. The second, too. But the third — the trophies, the sustained dominance of Europe — remains stubbornly out of reach.
This week was another sharp reminder of that.
Money, power… but where are the trophies?
Six first legs, six Premier League clubs, not a single win. An aggregate score of Europe 16-6 Premier League. No one is out yet, no one is through, but those numbers strip away the hype around English supremacy pretty quickly.
Yes, five of the six ties were away from home. Yes, Tottenham Hotspur remain their own travelling circus. But watching Manchester City brushed aside by Real Madrid, Chelsea fold late on against Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal grind to a 1-1 at Bayer Leverkusen felt awfully familiar.
They looked spent. Not just heavy-legged, but drained in the head as well as the legs.
Chelsea conceded twice late on, a manageable PSG deficit suddenly swelling into something far more daunting. Manchester City were smashed by three Federico Valverde goals in 23 minutes. Spurs were 4-0 down after 23 minutes. These weren’t isolated lapses; they looked like the product of players running on fumes.
The Premier League still feels like the fastest, most intense competition in Europe, perhaps anywhere. That comes at a cost. You cannot hit that level every three or four days from August to May without something giving. As injuries mount and minds tire, performances dip. We’ve seen the pattern before.
A calendar that never lets up
For English clubs and the national team, there is a growing sense of players being pushed to breaking point. The calendar keeps expanding: a supersized Club World Cup last summer featuring Chelsea and City, the Nations League, expanded Champions League and Europa League formats, bloated World Cups. All of it stacked on top of a league that already asks more of its players physically than almost any other.
Elsewhere, the system bends occasionally to help. In England, it barely budges.
Chelsea spent their weekend slogging through extra time against Championship side Wrexham. PSG, by contrast, were handed the weekend off after Nantes and the Ligue de Football Professionnel agreed to postpone their game. In Germany, Bayern Munich’s 4-1 win over Borussia Monchengladbach was moved to Friday night, giving them an extra day before facing Atalanta on Tuesday.
Newcastle United and Manchester City? They were knocking lumps out of each other late on Saturday in an FA Cup fifth-round tie.
It isn’t just the timing of fixtures. It’s the relentlessness of the league itself.
No easy games, no easy excuses
The cliché about “no easy games” in the Premier League has never felt truer. Wolverhampton Wanderers, on course for one of the worst top-flight points totals in history, still managed to take four points off Champions League sides Arsenal and Liverpool in the space of two weeks.
Look at the weekend of January 24-25. Liverpool lost at Bournemouth. Spurs drew at Burnley. Newcastle were beaten at home by Aston Villa. Either side of that, in Europe, English clubs were strolling.
Liverpool hammered Marseille and Qarabag 9-0 on aggregate. Spurs beat Borussia Dortmund and Eintracht Frankfurt 2-0 — their only wins of the calendar year amid a 12-match domestic winless run. Newcastle smashed PSV 3-0 and drew 1-1 away at PSG.
By the end of the league phase, five English clubs sat in the top eight of the Champions League standings. A record nine Premier League sides reached the knockout rounds across the three European competitions. It was easy then to talk about England having the best teams, the strongest league, the deepest talent pool.
But dominance is measured in silver, not seeding.
The numbers don’t lie
Strip away the noise and the last five seasons paint a clear picture. Of the 10 Champions League finalists, four have been English. Two have lifted the trophy: Chelsea in 2021, Manchester City in 2023. Spain have matched that with two wins of their own, both courtesy of Real Madrid in 2022 and 2024.
The Europa League tells a similar story. Three English finalists in five years, one winner — Spurs last season. Spain again sits ahead, with Villarreal in 2021 and Sevilla in 2023.
This is not dominance. Not even close.
Dominance was what La Liga delivered in the mid-2010s. From 2014 to 2018, Spanish clubs claimed nine of the 10 Champions League and Europa League titles. Real Madrid won four Champions Leagues, Barcelona one. Sevilla took three Europa Leagues, Atletico Madrid another. Only Manchester United’s 2017 Europa League win broke the monopoly.
By that standard, the Premier League’s recent record looks respectable, powerful, but far from hegemonic.
Guardiola’s puzzle, Ferguson’s shadow
Even Pep Guardiola, the manager who has bent the domestic landscape to his will with six Premier League titles in nine completed seasons, has found Europe a harder code to crack.
In that time, Manchester City have reached two Champions League finals and one semi-final. Now they face a 3-0 deficit against Real Madrid, a mountain that may prove too steep. If Guardiola walks away this summer, he will leave with a stack of league titles but only one Champions League in 10 seasons at City.
It would echo Sir Alex Ferguson’s record at Manchester United: domestic domination, but comparatively modest returns in Europe, during an era when English clubs were widely seen as inferior to their continental rivals.
No shortcuts to the summit
Mikel Arteta knows how thin the margins are. After Arsenal were undone by a Bayer Leverkusen corner routine in that 1-1 draw in Germany, he was asked whether the game underlined the difficulty of winning the Champions League.
“Yes, and how difficult it is to win against any opponent in the competition and especially away from home,” he said. “There is a big factor there. We knew the importance of the game and the difficulty of the opponent and now we need to finish it in London.”
Before they can do that, Arsenal face Everton at home. Another supposedly “routine” game that rarely feels like one.
Chelsea and Newcastle might like to rotate heavily before their second legs. Instead, they face each other this weekend. Spurs, fighting for their Premier League lives, go to Liverpool on Sunday. Jürgen Klopp’s side need the points just as badly to secure their place in next season’s Champions League. Manchester City travel to a rejuvenated West Ham United, fully aware that one more slip could cost them the title.
Relentless is the only word.
Europe moves through the gears
Could this still turn? Of course. Arsenal should finish the job back in London. Chelsea, Spurs and Manchester City have enough talent to conjure something extraordinary in their second legs. Liverpool might yet overturn Galatasaray. Newcastle could return from Barcelona with one of the greatest results in their history.
But this week, when Bayern, Real Madrid and PSG — clubs who share the Premier League’s financial might but not its level of exhaustion — needed to accelerate, they did. English sides, by and large, stalled.
History suggests we shouldn’t be surprised. The question now is whether the Premier League, for all its money and power, can ever truly conquer Europe while its clubs are running this hard just to stand still at home.
