As the Arsenal players returned to training after the international break, they couldn’t help noticing a shift around the club.
There was a lift, as they began to look up to the very pinnacle of the game again. Mikel Arteta still wants to ensure they push as much as possible in the Premier League but his staff were already preparing for Real Madrid, and the Champions League. Meanwhile, Aston Villa have naturally been feeling something similar.
It is now the great ambition, that could reframe the entire season. Liverpool may have been the best team for months, which will ensure they are more than worthy Premier League winners, but a drop-off at the wrong time has cost them in Europe.
Those at Inter Milan have noticed parallels from their own last major Champions League run two years ago. Napoli were Europe’s outstanding team over that 2022-23 season, essentially winning the league by February, only to suddenly drop off in March.
Serie A’s fourth-placed AC Milan knocked them out in the Champions League quarter-finals, only for third-placed Inter to then eliminate their city rivals in the semi-finals.
Given a few other developments that suggest similar this time around, the wonder is if something of a trend may be starting to emerge.
Are we about to temporarily go back to the days when the Champions League suited those sides who aren't necessarily the best in their country, or at least don’t have to endure the rigours of a title race?
It was very definitely a pattern from 2000 to 2007, and it does not feel like a coincidence that was the period immediately after the competition’s last major expansion. The Champions League initially went to 32 teams in 1999-2000, bringing in third- and fourth-placed teams for the first time, while the World Cup had also just risen to 32 teams. That immediately brought more games and many squads struggled to cope with the extra demands.
League positions of Champions League finalists
Year - match: Winners - Runners-up
2000 - Real Madrid 2-1 Valencia: 5th - 3rd
2001 - Bayern Munich *1-1 Valencia: 1st - 5th
2002 - Real Madrid 2-1 Bayer Leverkusen: 3rd - 2nd
2003 - AC Milan **0-0 Juventus: 3rd - 1st
2004 - Porto 3-0 Monaco: 1st - 3rd
2005 - Liverpool ***3-3 AC Milan: 5th - 2nd
2006 - Barcelona 2-1 Arsenal: 1st - 4th
2007 - Milan 2-1 Liverpool: 4th - 3rd
* Bayern Munich won 5-4 on penalties
** AC Milan won 3-2 on penalties
*** Liverpool won 3-2 on penalties
There was an extended period where clubs just couldn't excel on two or more fronts. The telling stat from that eight-year period is that more teams that finished fourth or lower in their domestic leagues reached Champions League finals than those who were simultaneously winning their national title. One of the latter was also Porto of 2003-04, who arguably took advantage of wealthier clubs struggling. Jose Mourinho’s team navigated the gaps left by the biggest squads to become the competition’s last great surprise.
There was even a symbolism in the 2002-03 final, as Italian champions Juventus were beaten by third-placed Milan. The 2022-23 campaign had echoes of this. Back then, Milan and Real Madrid seemed to make a virtue of offsetting disappointing league seasons with the greatest prize of all. Their four Champions League victories from 2000 to 2007 came alongside domestic finishes of fifth, third, third and fourth.
It certainly looked as if the lesser demands of their domestic campaigns left them fresher, and enjoying a new vitality once the spring sun came out and the Champions League opened up. Milan even used to play the competition theme because of the effect it had on the players.
Revenues to regular qualifiers of course multiplied over that same period, and the wealthiest began to accumulate more and more income. This meant higher wages and, eventually, several superclub squads. They suddenly had much greater depth. The 2008-09 season started a new era of doubles and trebles, as such achievements were reeled off to a degree unprecedented in history.
Prior to this, Manchester United were the only club from one of the five major leagues to have done a treble involving the Champions League. There have since been six in 16 years.
The finals of 2009, 2010 and 2011 even featured old-fashioned battles between domestic champions, first against first, a feature repeated in 2015, 2017 and 2020. Real Madrid in that time have achieved three league and Champions League doubles, something they had only managed twice in their history before 2016.
All of this may now have been disrupted by the Champions League’s expansion to 36 teams, and the necessary move to what is essentially a parallel league season.
It has already coincided with injury crises at multiple major clubs, from all of the English participants to Real Madrid.
A fair question is whether this will lead to some of the post-2000 patterns. In the same way that clubs weren’t used to a double group stage then, they aren’t used to January football now.
The extra demands have been tough, even for the biggest squads, particularly on the back of the crunched calendar over the five years since the Covid-19 shutdown. Napoli in 2022-23 didn’t have this expanded Champions League but they did have the World Cup splitting the season less than a year and a half after Euro 2020. These are all distortions that work against extended runs of form. By the time Napoli faced Milan, they looked as flat as Liverpool did against Paris Saint-Germain.
Might this lead to a period where teams try to just get through the August-March stretch, and then everyone sees where they are after that last international break? Will we be able to trust “regular season super favourites" – to use Arsene Wenger's term – in the same way? Could the modern Champions League again serve those who are just about able to keep it going for the new “business end”, or simply know how to ramp it up from the quarter-finals? Real Madrid, of course, have mastered this for some time. Except, they are now in a particularly intense LaLiga title race with Barcelona.
That could now help Arsenal, Aston Villa and Borussia Dortmund.
It wouldn’t be modern football, however, without some new twist on the other side of all this. Lesser demands aren’t just a feature when you’re lower in the table, after all. That’s also the case when you are well clear at the top and can expend less energy in your league campaign.
Paris Saint-Germain have typically been cruising for most of the Ligue 1 season and it has undeniably helped them motor through the last few months. Bayern Munich are enjoying similar thanks to a six-point Bundesliga lead over Bayer Leverkusen.
The obvious counter-example is Liverpool, but that isn’t quite the same thing, since they have not been the Premier League’s dominant team despite their lead. It took much more energy than it looked to get top by February, especially after seven years of competing against City. This is what mitigates against the fact that both Barcelona and Madrid, as well as Inter and PSG, can still complete a treble this season. One of them would make it seven in 17. They can’t all do it, though, and this is the stage where it gets most difficult. Madrid and Barcelona, for example, may end up sapping each other.
None of this is to say the trend is definitely happening. It’s just that the potential factors are there.
These quarter-finals might offer even more. We may see doubling down on a previous treble trend, or a return to something else.
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