A new era of English dominance in the Champions League? Reaching the quarter-finals is nothing

In the coming days and weeks — today, even — you will likely read about a new era of English dominance in the Champions League, of the fear spreading across the continent like a contagion that the Premier League is back on top of the pile, the re-crowned King of Nations.

Let’s face it: that’s nonsense, really. Trying to make sense of the Champions League is like trying to open Pandora’s Box and neatly line-up the contents on a shelf.

Yet that is what should be celebrated about the Champions League: the disorder and the chaos, the unpredictability in an age where the only uncertain element of the Premier League title race is in which order the Top Six will finish.

Thanks for the memories

European football should be about the memorable moments: Manchester United’s divisive VAR-inspired penalty against Paris Saint-Germain, Cristiano Ronaldo’s ego-inflating hat-trick against Atletico Madrid; Liverpool’s Miracle in Istanbul; Lyon playing Dinamo Zagreb in 2011, needing Ajax to lose against Real Madrid and a seven-goal swing to progress from the group stage, falling behind then winning 7-1, with Bafetimbi Gomis scoring the fastest hat-trick in Champions League history (you don’t remember that, do you?).

If you want to draw upon statistics to explain the Champions League, then statistically speaking you are more likely to win the Champions League when three clubs from your country reach the last eight, the case in the previous five Champions League tournaments.

Germany have never had more than two sides in the quarter-finals, but Bayern Munich, knocked out by Liverpool, have won it five times, joint-third in the all-time list behind Real Madrid and AC Milan.

Crunching the numbers

In the 20 years since a country could possibly have four sides in the Champions League, not once has a nation contributing half of the last eight sides ever won it. For a start, that feat means more of a country’s teams are likely to go out.

There is a 68.6 per cent chance of two English clubs drawing each other in Friday’s lunch-time draw, meaning one would be guaranteed to go out. And there is an 8.6 per cent likelihood of all four of them being drawn together, therefore meaning two would definitely be eliminated.

If you really want to talk about Champions League domination, then reaching the quarter-finals is nothing. Midfielder Bernardo Silva scoffed at the suggestion that Manchester City had got anywhere by reaching the last eight following their demolition of Schalke last week.

England’s domination of the ’70s

You want to talk about domination? Spain’s Real Madrid and Barcelona have won seven of the last 10 Champions Leagues, and Real Madrid four of the last five. They were knocked out in that shock against Ajax in the last round, where is the sense in that?

Or maybe you can discuss dominance in different terms, in the mid-2000s when Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and United all reached the quarters between 2007 and 2009, and one English team reached the final every year from 2004 to 2009.

Or you can start talking about dominance when English clubs win six Champions League finals in a row — as Liverpool, Nottingham Forest and Aston Villa did between 1976 and 1982, the longest successive stretch of any nation (Spain have had two runs of five, their current one and 1955-1960, Holland had a run of four from 1969 to 1973).

If there is any sense to make of any of it, it’s that the Premier League has six clubs in the top 10 of Deloitte’s annual Football Money League, and four of the top eight, so if it was all about money then it would follow that half of the remaining eight teams are English.

But we know it’s not all about the money, because of the chaos. “You know the thing about chaos?” the Joker says in The Dark Knight. “It’s fair.”