The huge problem for Uefa with English domination of Europe – UK Times

As tends to be the case with Unai Emery in the Europa League, his team are coming into form at exactly the right time. An often laborious 2026 for Aston Villa has suddenly enjoyed release. Working on limited resources relative to the top of the Premier League, Emery has got it close to spot on. Villa are suddenly flying just before their biggest game in 44 years.

They thrashed Nottingham Forest to get to this Europa League final against Freiburg and then put in one of the performances of the season in shredding Liverpool, scoring four goals in each game.

Villa will rightly fancy themselves. This was precisely why Emery was appointed, to take them to these levels; to make them dream.

The Basque might well secure Villa’s first continental silverware since the 1982 European Cup, and first trophy at all in 30 years, while also winning his own sixth Europa League.

And yet that remarkable latter record isn’t the only trend here.

A week later, Crystal Palace may win their own first ever European trophy, in the form of the Conference League.

Last year, Tottenham Hotspur ended their own trophy drought with the Europa League, following on from West Ham United with the Conference League in 2023.

And it’s because of such feats that all of Brentford, Brighton, Bournemouth and even Sunderland should now be thinking similar about next season.

There is real opportunity here – and a wider point to address.

Before going further into that it should be stressed that none of this is to try and diminish the feats of each individual club, or enjoyment of their fans. These are the good times. Relish them.

West Ham enjoyed their greatest day in decades in 2023, something all the more special given what has happened since. Villa may well be the same on Wednesday. Spurs will always have Bilbao. Palace may always have Leipzig.

But given we are talking about so many “greatest days” for so many English clubs in such a short space of time, is this what the future of European football is now set to be – at least for the second- and third-tier competitions?

Are the Europa League and Conference League trophies now just destined to be rotated as special days between Premier League clubs?

The Champions League is different since it features all the wealthiest European clubs, but that is also relevant to this.

The elite competition’s expansion has sucked in most of the wealthiest clubs and consequently the potential Europa League winners, creating a vacuum only really filled by English clubs.

Consider the following numbers.

Last season, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur had multiple times the revenue of anyone else in the Europa League.

This season, Aston Villa have more than double anyone else’s. Based on the last accounts, their revenue was €450.2m, with the next closest in the season’s Europa League field a mere €216.3m, which was Roma. Freiburg have a revenue of €162.8m, just 36 per cent of Villa’s.

Directly above Roma in the Deloitte Football Money list, meanwhile, are Bournemouth, with a revenue of €218.5m. Just above them are Crystal Palace, whose revenue of €232.5m naturally dwarfs absolutely everyone in the Conference League. Rayo Vallecano’s, for example, is around €60m.

A picture emerges, and it isn’t only Premier League clubs celebrating.

Much of this was inevitable, too.

Looking at the top 30 of that Deloitte Football Money League, exactly half of them are English clubs. There are six English clubs in the top 10 alone, although none in the top four.

Deloitte Football Money League representation

No other country has more than four, and they are usually almost certain to be in the Champions League.

From that, it’s hard not to see how this trend will continue.

And while it’s clearly great for English football, for now, it is evidently a problem for Uefa.

There will obviously be some counter-arguments to this. One will doubtless be about English media arguing about English glory – a point genuinely raised in one Uefa meeting.

Another will be to refer to Spanish success in the 2000s or, even more relevantly, Italy in the 1990s; as if these are simply inevitable cycles.

That latter period saw seven different Serie A clubs win European trophies if you include Napoli’s Uefa Cup in 1988-89, and four others reach finals – right down to Torino. Ten of the clubs enjoyed such feats outside of the Champions League.

But the response to both of those counter-arguments is connected. Yes, all of that came from Serie A wealth, but the finances were nowhere near as hard-fixed as they are now. That was still an era when Bayern Munich had never won more than three titles in a row. In addition, the regulations didn’t even allow accumulating more than five foreign players for half that decade.

None of that is applicable today, where financial disparity is defined and increasing. And, after a time, there comes a question over how beneficial this is for English football, too.

Among football’s great strengths are its vitality and variety, as well as the distinction that comes from proving yourself at a different level. It’s healthier for everyone.

There is admittedly a slight irony to the discussion given the Champions League has only this season witnessed a debate over whether the football between Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain is not possible in the Premier League, but that really just comes from the same problem.

Those two are currently among the four wealthiest clubs in the sport, and don’t have any comparable competition in their domestic leagues. Of course they’re freer for that kind of game, as the Premier League’s own wealth constricts the rest of the continent.

Was this really what European football was supposed to be about?

Such situations have arisen, to be blunt, because Uefa haven’t spent enough time properly considering any of this. And that goes back 30 years. Competitive balance and health are supposed to be among their mission statements. They are absolutely supposed to be considering how you nurture a climate where you have a certain variety of winners every few seasons.

Right now, it’s close to impossible to weather Premier League financial power, but it isn’t irretrievable. There are solutions they could at least try.

It seems absurd to award so many European places to one league, since this just further distributes more wealth to that competition.

The full absurdity to this might have been emphasised by the mercifully short-lived prospect of Brentford having to lose at Liverpool on the final day to qualify for the Champions League. That would have been the scenario had Brentford not lost at the weekend, on the condition Villa finished fifth while winning the Europa League.

There’s even an argument to go back to having clubs drop back into the second-tier competition from the Champions League, given this would serve as some kind of balancing effect.

Either way, Uefa do need to have a proper think about all of this, or their continental competitions will get increasingly drowned out by English joy.

Even genuinely special days could end up looking a bit routine.