COLUMN: The Premier League may look unassailable, but La Liga is contributing to Champions League dominance

Jon Driscoll can be found on social media here, and if you’re hungry for more, tune into his weekly La Liga podcast with Terry Gibson. You can also read more from Driscoll in his two books Get It Kicked and The Fifty.

The final matchday delivered as promised. The newish Champions League format has its shortcomings, but it is set up to deliver a series of cliffhangers on Matchday 8 and I am certain UEFA would like to extend their thanks to Anatoliy Trubin, Benfica’s giant goalkeeper who headed his side’s fourth goal against Real Madrid to rescue their place in the tournament. It will be an iconic moment. Who didn’t deliver on that chaotic night and, frankly, in the competition in general this season? The Spanish clubs. 

We have been here before, the enfeeblement of Spanish football bowed and broken by the Premier League’s financial juggernaut. The 2007/08 Champions League semi-finals had three out of four English clubs. Manchester United beat Chelsea in the Moscow final. A year later and against the semis were three-quarters English with only Barcelona standing against them.  

Looking back at that Pep Guardiola Barca side now, it seems ludicrous to recall that the English football intelligentsia initially dismissed them as lightweights who would be ground under the inevitable Premier League steamroller. It was true that the English clubs were growing rich. And while it is usually true that money talks, Chelsea’s quirky 2012 victory was the only one for a Premier League club in a ten-year period. From 2014 to 2018, Real Madrid were champions of Europe four times and Barcelona once. There was a depth to Spanish continental success: between 2010 and 2021 there were nine Spanish winners of the Europa League. It took a long time for the English to spend that TV bounty wisely.

Goalscoring goalkeeper Trubin
Super-sub Alisson Santos
Olympiacos end 12-year knockout wait

So many amazing moments!#PricelessMoments | @MastercardEU pic.twitter.com/p0eBQLGd8j

— UEFA Champions League (@ChampionsLeague) February 2, 2026

Then last week, five of the top eight slots in the Champions League first phase were taken by Premier League clubs – and one of them was Tottenham Hotspur! They were only there because they had beaten Manchester United, equally hapless in last season’s Premier League, in the Europa League final. So, has the day finally arrived, the day when Premier League riches have made English clubs unassailable? After all, the biggest voices in Spanish football have been foretelling this for years. La Liga President Javier Tebas uses it as ammunition in his quest for rule changes and stricter financial controls from UEFA. Real Madrid President Florentino Perez uses it when he pushes the concept of the European Super League. The chief mystery of the abortive launch in 2021 was that the Premier League clubs, the big winners under the current arrangements, were initially keen until apoplectic fan power killed it stone dead in the English consciousness. 

The new format helps the English clubs. With eight or ten games to play before the knock-outs, the League Stage is more attritional than the old groups, in which you could be qualified four games in. It makes sense to rotate players, and the depth of Premier League resources is a big advantage. It also helps English clubs that you cannot play a national rival in the League Phase. If the table is right, then five of the best eight clubs are English, so their fixture list is proportionately easier because they don’t play one another.

As an aside, I would abolish that stipulation anyway. It feels like a relic of the early days of multiple participants from the richer leagues when there was an understandable reluctance for them to be drawn together too early. This season we’ve had six English clubs and five Spanish and a lukewarm League Phase. I cannot imagine either broadcasters or fans would be unhappy to see more local clashes on the continental stage, especially if it bolsters the integrity of the competition.

But a tweak would not change the whole picture. The Premier League generates eye-watering sums, and its relegation battle generates more transfer spending than the chase for the title elsewhere. Jorgen Strand Larsen, scorer of one league goal this season, can command a fee of €49.7m to join a team 15th in the league. A club in any other league could assemble a squad for that. The Premier League’s summer window spend was more than the Bundesliga, La Liga, Ligue 1 and Serie A clubs put together.

And yet. I don’t believe we have passed a point of no return. Real Madrid generate more money than any English club. They have financial headroom that could be used to improve their squad. And no one forced them to appoint Alvaro Arbeloa. Atletico Madrid’s home defeat against Bodo-Glimt can hardly be explained by the size of the Premier League’s global TV contracts. Diego Simeone has had €126m Joao Felix, €75m Julian Alvarez and €72m Thomas Lemar at his disposal in recent seasons and they look less likely to be crowned European champions than in their patched-up veteran days.

Honourable exceptions, Barcelona were the only Spanish team to finish in the top eight but, as we all know, the incompetence of the Josep Maria Bartomeu regime plunged the club into a financial black hole. We should also note that any of the three surviving La Liga giants can still win this season’s crown.

Not so Villarreal, whose Matchday 8 performance against Bayer Leverkusen was an embarrassment. They had been a tad unlucky in earlier games, but they were simply awful later in the tournament, a drop-off that was as costly in terms of surrendered prize money as it was unprofessional. I have more sympathy for Athletic Club who do remarkably well to compete at the highest level and who right now look like they are coming to the end of a cycle. 

Having five clubs in the Champions League exposed the two great missing links in La Liga’s European contingent. Specifically, Sevilla and Valencia; one is racked by institutional mismanagement and a boardroom civil war, the other crippled by an owner who gives every impression of hating the very essence of the club. The bottom half of La Liga has clearly benefitted from a more even distribution of TV money. The days of basketcase clubs unable to pay the players they signed are thankfully gone.

At Newcastle’s pre match presser in Paris, I asked Anthony Gordon to explain the difference between Champions League football and the Premier League. His answer pic.twitter.com/FvzVLJgb0G

— Oma Akatugba (@omaakatugba) January 27, 2026

Nothing in any regulations prevents La Liga from doing a better job of selling itself to the world. Nothing stops Real Madrid’s players from buying into a coach who wants them to work to a plan when they lose the ball, nothing stops Barca from pressuring the ball in midfield to go with their vertigo inducing defensive line, and no one else can help Diego Simeone settle on a notion of how best to use his expensively assembled squad. Newcastle’s Anthony Gordon made an interesting observation when asked about the initial dominance of English clubs this season arguing that top continental clubs play more open tactical styles.

“The Champions League is a bit more of an older style of game, more football based. Teams come and try and play proper football. In the Premier League, you see a lot more long throw-ins, set pieces – it’s become a lot slower and more set piece based.”

I agree that the Premier League has toughened up this season with far fewer errors by defenders serving up chances to opponents on the edge of their own penalty area, and a greater emphasis on set plays. During the period of Spanish domination of European finals, Barcelona and Real Madrid had great players, but the Spanish clubs also had tactical savvy. This season, the five Spanish clubs have conceded 73 goals while the six English have conceded only 45. Is Gordon right, have they slipped behind their more pragmatic (and amply rewarded) English rivals? With Barca’s fifth place an exception, it has been an underwhelming Champions League so far: improvement is urgently needed and not impossible to achieve.

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