On Sunday, Bayer Leverkusen beat Werder Bremen 5-0 and, by so doing, wrapped up their first ever Bundesliga title. Five times before they had been runners-up — four times in the six seasons from 1996-97 when they drew the nickname Neverkusen — but under Xabi Alonso they have been by far the best team in Germany this season.
This is, however, more than a story about a triumphant underdog. It raises the question: why is such a victory not more common? How has football, the great universal phenomenon, become a sport in which only a tiny handful of clubs can win? It’s not just in Germany, where Bayern Munich had won the previous 11 league titles. Juventus won their ninth in a row in Italy in 2019-20. Paris Saint-German have won nine of the last 11 French titles and will surely make it 10 in 12 this season. In Spain, Real Madrid are likely this season to make it 19 of the last 21 league titles for them and Barcelona. Even in England, defeats for Liverpool and Arsenal on Sunday make Manchester City favourites to claim a sixth league title in seven years.
In any competition there is the obvious problem that the more successful a team is, the more prize money it will accrue, and the more interest it will generate, drawing increased revenues from gate receipts, broadcasting deals, sponsorship and merchandise. The more money a club has, the better players it can sign and so the more likely it is to win, which in turn generates more revenue, creating an unhelpful cycle in which the rich increasingly dominate.
When the first professional football league was established in England in 1888, that danger was understood and measures taken to combat it. It was a very different world, in which gate receipts represented almost all a club’s income. Initially, to offset the advantage of popular clubs with large stadiums, home sides paid away sides £10. From 1919, this became 20% of gate receipts. Meanwhile, to reduce the bargaining power of labour and with it the advantage of the richer clubs who could afford higher wages, the system of hire-and-retain was established by which clubs held the players’ licences: it meant that even when a player’s contract had expired, he could not move to a new club until a deal was agreed to transfer his licence. Having reduced the mobility of players, the League in 1901 instituted a maximum wage of £10 a week.
As crowds declined through the Seventies, the financial struggles of league football led, in the Thatcherite economic climate, to the abolition of the levy paid by home clubs to their opponents in 1981. But its influence can still be felt today. Unlike in Europe, which never adopted the levy, English football for a long time didn’t develop a superclub model, and even now, the most successful club in English history, Manchester United, have won only 16% of all English league titles, while Juventus have won 30% in Italy, Madrid 38% in Spain and Bayern 53% in Germany. But there have also been changes from 1981 onwards: Liverpool, the most successful side up until that point, had won 14% of all league titles; since then, Manchester United have won 32%. In fact, five sides — United, Liverpool, Manchester City, Chelsea and Arsenal — have between them claimed all but five titles since.
Meanwhile, the advent of the Champions League in 1992 has radically increased the income available from European football — not just in terms of matchday revenue, but commercial deals and broadcast revenues too. The European Cup was launched in 1955 as a knockout competition but, after Real Madrid had beaten Napoli in the first round in 1987-88, Silvio Berlusconi, at the time the owner of AC Milan, pointed out the absurdity, as he saw it, of having the champions of Spain and Italy, two huge markets, meeting in a direct eliminator so early in the competition. The outcome of his lobbying was a group stage and, gradually, an expansion so that, rather than just the champions, the competition now includes up to four sides from each country. After another rejig, two countries next season will have five. The result has been that the competition has become an increasingly closed shop: it’s 20 years since a side from outside Spain, England, Italy or Germany won; in the 20 years before that, nine different countries provided European champions.
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