The reasons for the dominance of the strong in the Champions League: what the last few years have been like and who was the last champion outside the major leagues

We could say, without fear of being wrong, that the driving force behind the conception of the main European tournaments may have been the desire to answer one question: who is the best? when in 1955 Gabriel Hannot -journalist and director of the French newspaper L’Équipe- together with his colleague Jacques Ferranwith the support of the president of Real Madrid, Santiago Bernabeuand his Gustave Sebesthe Hungarian Deputy Minister of Sports and Vice-President of UEFA, planned the creation of European Club Champions Cup, They should never have imagined the magnitude of such an idea and how over time it has become the most important club football tournament in the world.

Although the competition has generally been dominated by the biggest clubs in Europe—without further ado, Real Madrid are the absolute masters with 14 wins—the tournament has seen teams from across the continent win the orejona and how many others didn’t make it, but managed to be animators in different versions.

The margin for surprise seems to have narrowed, deepening the ownership of the most powerful, especially in the last decade. How did it happen; In The SportingNews It’s time to review some of the possible reasons.

The change of form over the years

With the net participation and exclusively by the league champions and with a straight knockout format, the old European cups were a complete uncertainty as a bad run meant the end of the competition for anyone. Currently, with the format of the league, a club can afford a setback, even up to two in the group stage and progress to the next round.

An exception to what was suggested could well have been the large groups that managed to stay for several years. And the name of Real Madrid appears once again, reigning champions since the beginning with 5 cups in a row from 1956 to 1960. Other examples: the 70s with Ajax and Bayern Munich trebles of both champions Liverpool and Nottingham Forest.

The coefficients of the championships are reflected in the Champions League

We can stand out two big changes in the European Cup: the rift of the runners-up of the different leagues since the 1997-1998 edition and above all the importance of the UEFA coefficients. What about the last one? Coefficients are statistics used by European football’s parent body to order and determine classifications or places in the draws. They are prepared periodically, updated each time a round of competitions ends, and exist for both clubs (taking into account performance over the last five years) and confederations.

Thus, for example, leagues with greater power can ensure the presence of more clubs in elite tournaments, while those of lesser level, the opposite.

The Bosman Law that changed football forever

The gap between the rich, the middle class and the less affluent clubs is widening year by year, but beyond the history and how each institution built its names, there was one important fact that changed everything: Bosman’s Law.

December 15, 1995 was the beginning for the multicultural groups that are so common today, since a decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union, which came into force in 1993, determined that any citizen of this community could exercise a profession without any kind of restriction, ie in European football, for example, the limit on foreign players was put to an end in each country’s matches.

The origin? Jean-Marc Bosman was a Belgian footballer who in 1990 was out of contract with Royal Liège in his home country and who, not too happy with the offer of a renewal, accepted the offer to be approached by USL Dunkerque for promotion of France. But at that time the legislation indicated that players who severed their ties were not free, but that their future depended on the club that held their pass until that time. A legal battle ensued with the decision in favor of the footballer and the absolute change of the global paradigm.

The participation of the leagues in the last 10 semi-finals of the European Cup

Before the Champions League was the Champions League, it was the European Cup. It is worth remembering that only the champions of the European leagues and the winner of the previous edition of the continental club level maximum competition qualified for the competition. From the 1982–1983 season to the 1991–1992 season, 17 national leagues were represented in the semi-finals (it is worth mentioning that the 1991–1992 season consisted of a quarter-final group of two groups with 4 teams each in which the top two from each zone advanced to the final).

^{Those who were champions are in bold}

The participation of the leagues in the last 10 semi-finals of the Champions League

The last decade of European competition emphasizes the dominance of the 5 major leagues (Germany, Spain, France, England and Italy) since from the 2012-2013 season to the latest edition of 2021-2022 they starred with their teams in most of the semi-finals during that period and hardly only one team from a different league had the audacity to sneak in: Ajax, from the Netherlands, in 2018-2019. If you spin it even further, you can see that, of them, only three have achieved the title: La Liga, Bundesliga and Premier League.

Porto: the last champion outside the 5 leagues

You have to go until the season 2003-2004 to find a Champions League winning team that does not belong to any of the 5 major European leagues. Jose Mourinho’s Porto struck the blow, beating Monaco 3-0 in Gelsenkirchen, Germany and lifting their second ever Cup. It should be noted that in the semi-finals they beat Deportivo La Coruña, while the Monegasques did the same against Chelsea.