Will Champions League final with Liverpool and Real Madrid continue English soccer success?
Champions League final 2022 sees Liverpool and Real Madrid facoff in test of English soccer dominance.
In the knockout phase of a tournament, any result is theoretically possible. But heading into the Champions League final that will crown Europe’s best soccer club on Saturday, an air of inevitability surrounds Liverpool. The English juggernaut has contended for trophies all season long, already bagging two domestic cup competitions and missing England’s Premier League title by mere inches to Manchester City. This will be the team’s third Champions League final in five years.
On the other side of the soccer pitch, Real Madrid has had the opposite experience. Though it comfortably won Spain’s La Liga title this season, its path to the finals has been a Houdini-like act in which the club repeatedly escaped defeat in previous rounds against European giants Paris Saint-Germain, Chelsea and Manchester City. As Jonathan Wilson wrote in the Guardian, “They somehow cannot be finished off.”
The Premier League previously had a gap in talent development and managing, but club riches have undoubtedly helped bridge it.
Yet even more important than the narratives surrounding these individual clubs are the differences between the domestic leagues they’ve sprung from. Increasingly, English teams are ascendant across top European tournaments, regularly slaying competitors. A synergy of dollars, top talent and brilliant managers has lifted English clubs beyond the reach of other countries’ elite leagues.
At first glance, the Premier League appears to be a tale of two teams, Liverpool and Manchester City. As these clubs jostled to the wire for the league title this season, their exalted level of play seemed to have reduced the other 18 sides to the role of spectator. But the real measure of the Premier League’s quality is the competitive depth and parity that exist well beyond Liverpool and City. Per ClubElo.com, a website that ranks European teams based on their results, four English clubs are found in Europe’s top eight spots.
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