The Champions League quarter-final teams will be determined this week. Manchester City–Lepzig and Inter–Porto will play on Tuesday. Real Madrid-Liverpool and Napoli-Frankfurt will meet on Wednesday.
The Champions League has been dominated by money clubs for almost two decades. Among the champions, the most flagrant increase in cash in the 2000s was made by English Chelsea, who won the Champions League in 2021 and 2012.
Along with Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City have been vying for the crown of European football with the support of their new owners. Both clubs are so-called oil money teams. PSG is owned by the Emir Sheikh of Qatar Tamim. City’s money comes from the Sheikh of the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates Mansour’s out of pocket.
The clubs are also at the top of the list of the most obnoxious in football. Between the summer of 2011 and January of this year, only Manchester United’s player transfer balance is worse than PSG and City. Along with these clubs, Chelsea reaches a player transfer balance of over a billion minus.
In recent years, winning the Champions League has been pursued by buying talisman players – the player who will finally bring the team the much-needed championship. Such are, for example, those bought for PSG Neymarwho moved to Juventus after successful years at Real Madrid Cristiano Ronaldo and also the one playing for PSG Lionel Messi.
At this point in the season, there is one more talismanic player in the Champions League, bought by Manchester City this season Erling Haaland.
Haaland has not celebrated the championship, but he has been exceptional (you switch to another service) top scorer in the Champions League. Haaland has scored 28 goals in 24 matches.
– He is the missing piece for City to score goals. The team’s attacking game has been brilliant, but such a guaranteed goal scorer is exhausted, says Urheilu’s football expert Antti Pohja.
City’s sharpest tip bored
Josep Guardiola during his six seasons as head coach, City have won the English Premier League four times. Could he be the reason for City’s Champions League run-up?
– Traditionally, Guardiola’s teams have relied on probabilities, and in that sense, a series-based system suits them better. It is perhaps easier to defend a team like City from the championship if the final result of one or two matches is decisive, says Pohja.
Guardiola is one of the most successful head coaches in club football, winning the Champions League twice with Barcelona. However, at the helm of Bayern Munich and City, he has not lifted that trophy.
Someone has always been better. In the second season, Chelsea won the final match, last year Real Madrid won in the semi-finals. Better teams than City have also been found in the Premier League, when Liverpool won the championship and Arsenal is now the league leader.
– At least at the moment, the former assistant coach, Mikel Arteta, has overtaken Arsenal playing some of the most dynamic football in the Premier League. City and Guardiola will have to make some kind of changes – they know it themselves.
– City hasn’t played badly, but maybe their sharpest point is a bit dull at the moment. A certain level of decline has been seen in different areas of the game, Pohja estimates.
However, he states that City has been one of the best club teams in the world for a long time. So what’s wrong with the game? Pohja says that from the beginning of the season, City and Haaland lived a “honeymoon”, when the Norwegian scored 20 goals in 14 matches. Then the pace leveled off.
– City’s attacking play, and especially the last third, is built around Haaland. It affects a lot what other players do.
Pohja says that the team’s playing has in some respects become more monotonous precisely because Haaland is so central.
– City is not the same compared to how united the team was for a few years. Now there is a certain pecking order in creating goal situations.
Wealthy teams have been successful
PSG has been under sheikh ownership for a little over 10 years, Manchester City will be 15 years old in August.
PSG’s journey to the quarterfinals ended this season when Bayern Munich won 3–0 on aggregate. Manchester City and RB Leipzig are tied 1-1 when the teams meet again on Tuesday.
– I still believe that City is the early favorite, but in that situation anything can happen. City can win 6–0, the game is even, or Leipzig will strike from their own positions and City’s possible mistakes, Pohja punted.
Oil money has not yet bought a way to the championship. However, it can be pointed out that money has guaranteed victory in the Champions League since 2005. Since the 1996–97 season, the consulting company Deloitte has compiled the football “money league (you switch to another service)”, where 30 football clubs are ranked based on the income accumulated during the season.
No club outside the top ten has celebrated the title since the 2004 final, when Porto defeated Monaco. In the 2010s, a team outside the top ten wealthiest teams has appeared in the final three times: Atletico Madrid (2016, 2014) and Borussia Dortmund (2013).
Champions League winners from 2012 and ranking in the “money league”