How many CLs will be won by a club outside of England/Spain/Italy in the next 15 years?

And I know, Anderlecht beat Benfica in the UEFA Cup final to be exact.

But the past has nothing to do with it. If a Belgian team make it to the Group stage proper of the CL then in Belgian terms it is a very successful season.

Teams like Hoffenheim, Villareal and even Hertha Berlin are starting to be invested in with money and time and with them getting richer and Belgian players leaving Beligium at 18. I mean Standard, Anderlecht, Brugges, Antwerp all have history but what does that prove.

I watch the Belgian League on occasion and the League itself is very very competetative and the atmophere is brilliant but even Belgians could careless at times. What I am trying to say is if History meant anything Benfica would be in the last 4 every year as would Ajax

 

I think the Belgian champ as well as the champs of a a few other leagues, should get an automatic place in the group stage proper but thats a whole another arguement.

 

Clearly not.

 

I reckon premiership teams will win it 8 times out of the next 15. European clubs just cannot compete with the strength of the prem. Although Platini will probably put an end to that. Where was he when non-english teams were dominating the Champions League?

 

Where did you get that info from? Hertha has no investor, but has depts. If they make CL a big part of the money must be used to sign their key players, who are loaned from other clubs, or making depts.

Their current success comes from good transfers, a good coach
and also some luck.

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To answer the question. The contenders for the CL title come from the clubs
with the most money who collected some permanently European cup experience for a couple of years.

It´s not the strength of the prem, but the strength of their big 4. Only every couple of years another club can break their dominance and make it into the CL ranks there.

 

"Every couple of years"? Wouldn't that be refreshing. More like every 5 years.

 

The strength of being allowed to accumulate four billion in debt you mean. You're right, clubs in other leagues would never get away with owing 700 million like the likes of ManU and Chelsea, so that guarantees their domination for years to come.

 

Never mind the final stages. There are clubs who have to play FOUR qualifying rounds to even get into the tournament proper.

My club Twente has to play two qualifying rounds. Possible opponents in the first include UEFA winners Shaktar Donetsk and in the second Arsenal. How in gods name are we supposed to beat teams with over a 100 million a year to spend than us? I've said it before and I'll continue to say it, out of eight months of CL competition, only the last two are relevant. We might as well completely do away with the rest of the games. My new name for the CL: the stating the bleeding obvious league.

 

Hmm... well on average, yes. But in 15 years maybe a team like Bayern will get an easy draw. That's the only hope really to have 1 team outside the big 3 win it in the next 15 years.

If Bayern got Man United's draw this season and stayed healthy they very well could've made the final. But then they would still have needed to pull off a huge upset in the final. So 3 big "IF"s there. That's why the answer to the thread question is clearly 0 or 1. No more.

 

Yeh, they'll just "get away with" sweetheart deals from governments to build or rent stadia or sell their training ground under "interesting" circumstances instead...

 

Yeah, Man United owe their strength to the debt placed on them from outside investors, and not due to their huge revenue streams. And if you're telling me no billionaires ever invest in foreign teams then I have a bridge to sell you.

Not even counting the sweet TV deals the top Italian and Spanish teams receive. Around double what United and Chelsea will get from the EPL.

 

Challenge Inter,Juve,Real Madrid and Arsenal? Is this a joke?

Barca,Manu,Chelsea,Liverpool and Milan are the top teams and not those 4 wannabies above.

 

Well, Real Madrid was the favorite to win the Champions League at the beginning of the season in the UK bettings. I remind you that Real Madrid had won the past two Spanish leagues and Barcelona ended 18 points below.

Maybe you are the joke. Real Madrid a wannabe? You wish.

 

You can spend another 200 mio € and you still won't win the CL, just like Chelski.

 

300 hundred they say. How much can you spend?

 

No they weren't

 

Yeah, I seem to recall even Barca were bigger favorites to win CL at the start of the season even though Madrid were favorite to win La Liga.

Interestingly, you could've made 290% return on your wager had you picked Man United to win the EPL early in the 2008/9 season. But things always seem predictable in hindsight.

 

I have been checking and I may be wrong. I have seen in different sites that we were 4th favorites after Chelsea, Manchester and Barça.

Still being 4th favorites after our many years out in 1/8 final was a surprise to me. Maybe that's why I got consfused. My bad, I guess. Or maybe I read some bullshit from someone back in Septmeber.

 

People, People, we are talking here about 15 years. A lot can change in that time, as recently as 13 years ago for example (1996) one of the Champions League Quarter Finals was Panathiakos vs Legia Warsaw and Legia took four points for the English Champions in the group stage and only champions were admitted.

There is no reason to maintain that the current economic situation will maintain itself for that length of time. Actually it is looking increasingly unsustainable.

Also after the CL got to its current overly bloated condition for the 1999-2000 season we were told that it would be impossible for any side outside Italy, Spain, England and Germany to win it ever again (and when people mentioned Germany they nearly always meant Bayern Munchen or occasionally Borrusia Dortmund, but only due to 1997, but never someone like Leverkusen) but then Porto did it with Monaco in tow. It is not inconceivable that should a thing could not happen again, after all as Neeskens so repeatedly points out (and I agree btw) there are only really 5 maybe 6 'superclubs' left; Epl Top 3 plus La liga Top 2 with Arsenal an ambigious case, that leaves plently of rooms for shocks. I mean Fenerbache and Schalke made the Quarter Finals two years ago and there are far, far better non-big three sides out there than those two.

 

But today's superclubs or more super. The current Chelsea squad would piss all over the 2004 edition of Chelsea FC. Ditto for Man United, Liverpool and Barca. Meanwhile only Juve is weaker than 5 years ago and that's due to the match fixing incident.

 

You're being very selective with who you choose... Do you really think Real Madrid 2009 was better than Real Madrid 2004 (for at least the first 3/4rds of the season)... or that Milan 2009 is better than Milan 2004? Yet look what happened. Juve have always underperformed in the CL: only one semifinal and two quarter finals (both of which they utterly sucked in) in the past decade despite their 'dominance'.

 

Well that's the world you live in. The world I live in, we find it outrageous that Feyenoord is 24 million Euros in debt, and that they keep on spending while they are forced to cut their annual budget by 9 million. Feel free to argue with this but I would dare say that Feyenoord are a bigger club than Chelsea and the latter see no problem whatsoever with their 700 million GBP debt. Again, spot the difference. The irony being that clubs who are under pressure because they have a 24 million debt are supposed to compete with clubs who laugh in the face of a 700 million debt, and that fans of the latter actually feel proud of being 'superior' to the former. It's not just the difference between what clubs are allowed to spend that's increasing it's also the amount of debt that clubs in one league are allowed to get away with compared to others. The thought that the two are supposed to compete in one tournament is just ludicrous.

 

How relevant is any of that? The likes of Juventus and Milan have always been big in European football. What's changed is that the chances of them being challenged by less high profile clubs is now minimal and keeps on getting minimised still.

 

I was just replying to Napoli's post. If you want the relevant detail go to the earlier post. I was basically saying tha the superclubs aren't any better than they were five years ago; and five years ago Porto won the Champions League.