Five Factors Behind Premier League Teams’ Success in the Champions League
As the UEFA Champions League playoff round begins this week, only one team from the Premier League will be participating. Newcastle United is set to visit Baku on Wednesday to face the current champions of Azerbaijan, Qarabag FK.
For the majority, advancing to the playoff round is considered an achievement. The titleholders of both the Eredivisie and Serie A did not progress to the playoffs, having been eliminated from the league phase, along with two teams from LaLiga, another Dutch club, a German club, and a French club. Both finalists from the previous year’s Champions League, Inter Milan and Paris Saint-Germain, did not perform sufficiently in the league phase to advance directly to the round of 16, thus they are also in the playoffs, alongside Real Madrid, Atlético Madrid, Borussia Dortmund, and Juventus.
The primary aim of the league phase is to avoid elimination—unless you are part of the Premier League.
Arsenal topped the league phase of the Champions League, winning all eight of their matches. Liverpool finished in third place, Tottenham Hotspur in fourth, Chelsea in sixth, and Manchester City in eighth. To put it differently, here is the distribution of the eight clubs that earned a bye to the round of 16:
• Germany: 1
• Spain: 1
• Portugal: 1
• England: 5
Even more notable is that four of the five Premier League teams that finished in the top eight averaged more points per game in the Champions League than in their domestic league. Liverpool ranks sixth in England but third in Europe. Tottenham has recently dismissed their manager, is five points above the relegation zone in England, and finished fourth in the initial stage of a tournament that ostensibly includes the best teams globally.
It almost appears that the Champions League is easier for English clubs than the Premier League—and indeed, it is. Here are the five primary reasons.
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1. Premier League teams possess greater financial resources than most Champions League teams
A few weeks ago, Deloitte published their Money League, ranking the 30 wealthiest soccer clubs globally by revenue. Here’s how many clubs from each country made the list:
• Portugal: 1
• France: 1
• Turkey: 2
• Spain: 3
• Italy: 4
• Germany: 4
• England: 15
The Premier League boasts the most lucrative broadcasting agreements—by a significant margin—and has distributed those revenues more equitably from top to bottom than any other of the Big Five leagues in Europe. This results in the figures shown above.
While revenue does not directly correlate with success—West Ham United ranks 20th in the Money League, for instance—over a broad spectrum and extended time frame, the wealthiest teams tend to be the most successful for clear reasons.
2. Premier League teams have superior talent compared to most Champions League teams
Although reliable wage data is difficult to obtain, studies indicate that the estimated squad transfer values from Transfermarkt serve as a solid indicator of how much a team compensates its players. The amount a team pays its players is also a reliable indicator of their talent level.
Here’s how the top 25 teams in estimated market value are distributed across global soccer leagues:
• France: 1
• Portugal: 2
• Italy: 3
• Spain: 3
• Germany: 3
• England: 13
As I noted last month while discussing the parity in the Premier League this season:
“According to analysis by Futi’s John Muller, the Big Six employed 29% of Transfermarkt’s estimated 300 most valuable players in the world during the 2014-15 season, while only 7% were employed by other teams in England and 64% played elsewhere in Europe. Fast forward 10 years, and the Big Six’s share of the world’s elite players has remained stable at 29%, but the rest of the Premier League’s share of top talent has nearly tripled: up to 18%.“
The majority of the world’s best soccer players are competing in the Premier League—and many of them are not participating in the Champions League.
3. Premier League teams outperform most Champions League teams
The Club Elo ratings have historical data dating back to the 1920s, and the system is a straightforward historical record: two teams compete, and rating points are awarded or deducted based on the match location and final score.
The current Elo rankings align closely with the Transfermarkt estimations—even though the rankings do not consider how much a team compensates its players or how we perceive their quality. The purely results-based rankings distribute the top 25 spots by league as follows:
• France: 1
• Portugal: 2
• Spain: 3
• Germany: 3
• Italy: 4
• England: 12
While Elo is more of a retrospective model, we can also utilize betting markets to project team strength moving forward. There are individuals whose financial well-being relies on estimating how strong a given soccer team is compared to all others, and the site PitchRank cross-references weekly betting odds to provide insights into those assessments.
Bayer Leverkusen ranks as the eighth-highest seeded team among the 16 Champions League playoff clubs—approximately average. At PitchRank, there are 11 Premier League teams rated higher than Leverkusen. If we consider Benfica, the lowest-seeded team remaining in the Champions League, there are 16 Premier League clubs rated above them.
If a 36-team competition were to include the best teams worldwide, regardless of their league, nearly half could potentially come from the Premier League.
4. Premier League teams face less challenging schedules than other Champions League teams
Using the Club Elo ratings as a rough gauge of team strength, here’s how the Premier League teams rank compared to all other Champions League teams:
• Arsenal: 1st
• Manchester City: 2nd
• Liverpool: 5th
• Chelsea: 8th
• Newcastle: 10th
• Tottenham: 16th
According to UEFA regulations, teams from the same country cannot compete against each other in the league phase of the Champions League. Thus, Tottenham, for instance, cannot draw five of the top 10 teams in the tournament. Indeed, Opta’s strength-of-schedule rating indicates that Spurs had the easiest draw of any team. The same ratings suggest Liverpool had the fourth-easiest schedule, Chelsea the fifth easiest, and Manchester City the seventh easiest.
This does not imply that Premier League teams cannot encounter tough draws—Arsenal’s was roughly average in difficulty, while Newcastle’s was among the five most challenging—but it indicates that, on average, Premier League teams will face easier draws than teams from any other major league.
Of course, there is a degree of circular reasoning in the league-strength arguments: Premier League teams have easier schedules! But Premier League teams only have easier schedules because they do not have to compete against other Premier League teams!
This is why the stark numbers for the top eight appear: Premier League teams are already significantly stronger, on average, than teams in any other league. Consequently, the Premier League teams in the Champions League benefit from facing easier schedules, on average, than their counterparts.
5. The Premier League is more physically demanding than the Champions League
Before Newcastle’s final league-phase match against PSG, Anthony Gordon was asked about the differences between playing in the Premier League and the Champions League.
“In the Champions League, teams are much more open,” he stated. “They all try and play. It’s less transitional. In the Premier League, it’s become more physical than I’ve ever known it to be. It’s like a basketball game at times. It’s so relentless, physically. There’s not much control; it’s a running game. It’s about duels—who wins the duels wins the game.
“The Champions League is a bit more of an older style of game. It’s a bit more football-based. Teams come and try and play proper football. In the Premier League now you’re seeing a lot more throw-ins, set pieces. It’s become a lot slower and more set piece-based.”
There are two clear ways to support this with evidence. The first is by examining the number of long throw-ins per game—both in the Champions League and in the Premier League this year and last year.
In the Premier League last season, according to Gradient Sports data, the average game featured 1.22 long throws. This is similar to what we have observed in the Champions League so far, approximately 1.23 per game. However, in the Premier League this year? Teams are averaging 3.59 long throws per game. That represents a significant year-over-year change.
In a recent study on the set piece revolution in England, analyst Michael Caley found that Premier League teams are launching 45% of their throw-ins from attacking areas into the box, while the average over the previous four seasons was just 17%.
Similarly, there is an increased focus on competing for aerial balls—or, as Gordon described it, duels. When he mentions that teams in Europe “try and play football,” he means they attempt to advance the ball upfield through passing combinations on the ground. In the Premier League this year, much of the action on the field is determined by who reaches the ball in the air first—or who gets to the ball after someone else has contested it in the air.
In England, teams are combining to attempt 110 aerial challenges per game this season. This is a significant increase from last season’s figures—86.6 per game—and a notable contrast to what we observe in the Champions League: 77.3 per game.
Indeed, there were four teams in the Champions League league phase with a set piece expected goal differential of plus-2 or better—and all of them were from the Premier League. In fact, all six Premier League teams ranked in the top 10 for set piece performance:
Perhaps there is no better illustration of the differences between the Premier League and the Champions League than the team that won the Premier League last season.
As shown above, Liverpool was a dominant force in set pieces during the Champions League league phase. However, in the Premier League, their performance was markedly different:
To put it more simply, Liverpool led the Champions League with a plus-8 goal differential from set pieces—yet they rank second-to-last in the Premier League with a minus-6 goal differential from set pieces. Not only can Liverpool excel against the less physical opponents in Europe with set pieces, but they are also able to execute the style of play that Gordon refers to. In England, they complete 86.3% of their passes outside of the attacking third, while in Europe that figure rises to 90%.
The financial and tactical trends in global soccer have converged in a manner that amplifies an already significant gap between the top teams in Europe’s leading leagues.
While it was previously true that Premier League teams were more physical than those in other leagues, those other leagues had their own technical, tactical, and skill-based advantages. However, Premier League teams are now leveraging the most valuable strategic element (set pieces) much more aggressively than the rest of the world, their players are significantly more physical, and given their financial resources, their players are as skilled, if not more so, than those in every other league. Coupled with the rule-based quirk that prevents them from competing against each other, this results in five Premier League teams automatically qualifying for the Round of 16.
As for the lone team remaining in the playoff? Recall that set piece chart from the Champions League, where Newcastle ranked fourth behind Liverpool, Arsenal, and Chelsea? If we were to expand it to include all 36 teams in the league phase, Qarabag would rank last.
You can anticipate what will likely occur in their next two matches. It will probably resemble what transpired in the first eight.
