European Tour

An interesting article on the BBC Sport website:

"The Premier League is crowing and has every right to do so. All four Premiership clubs topped their Champions League group, and the chances of the big pot coming to England must surely be pretty good.Does this prove the Premiership is the cock-of-the-walk as the strongest league in the world, or is it too early to count chickens?

To stretch the domestic fowl metaphor almost to snapping point, could the chickens could be coming home to roost to justify the vast amounts of money splashed out by Premiership clubs seeking success? The Premiership is the goose laying all the golden eggs. It is now the richest league in the world, wallowing in cash from thumping great television deals.

Sheikh Maktoum is the latest to apply to join an ever-growing club of foreign zillionaires wanting to run English clubs as he attempts to buy Liverpool. It's all good, surely, isn't it? Okay, other countries have more than one representative going into the various pots for a knockout stage draw which will keep England's quartet apart. But is any challenge as strong as the English one?

Once the crowned head of the European game, Italian football is a fading beauty, attempting to powder over the blemishes of corruption and scandal. Of the Italian trio, only AC Milan topped their group, with Inter and Roma coming through groups which were hardly punishing tests. There is an irony lurking there somewhere that as Italy laud it as world champions, the country's domestic football is on a downward spiral.

It wasn't all that long ago that Serie A was the world's strongest league, and the fears expressed then that the Stranieri playing in Italy would affect the national team are being echoed by those branded as nay-sayers in the Premiership. Of the three Spanish clubs in the knock-out stages, you might not have expected Valencia to be the only table-toppers. Spain's Primera Liga probably now sits in second spot behind the Premiership, having elbowed Serie A into third place. Real Madrid were always going to qualify from their group, but would they have expected to have been beaten so soundly into second place by Lyon?

Real are still living on past reputation which Fabio Capello is doing his best to restore. Barcelona certainly did not display the pedigree expected of holders as they limped past Werder Bremen into second place in Group A.

France's Championnat has been a one-horse race for five years. No surprise that Lyon qualified, but at least they've got Lille for company as they proved the best of the rest of a pretty ordinary bunch behind Milan in group H. Porto are Portugal's only representative, while PSV shows that their money talks loudest in Dutch football. Ajax and Feyenoord once kept European football firmly under the clog in the days Dutch clubs could keep their players, but without the financial clout that Philips-backed PSV enjoy, they are second-class citizens, confined to Uefa Cup action.

German football plays to big crowds as the love-in from the World Cup continues, but even mighty Bayern lack the financial muscle to stop their best players being tempted away. We haven't forgotten Celtic. The first British winners of Europe's top club prize deservedly take their place in the knock-out draw. But the weak competition they face on a weekly basis is hardly the ideal preparation to steel them to face Europe's best.

The line-up of the usual suspects for the knockout stage does underline that the power and clout in European football still remains in the west. Despite the influx of oligarch cash in Russian football, neither of the Moscow clubs qualified. Former European Champions Steaua Bucharest were just happy to be in the group stages, and the Greek clubs flattered to deceive.

If it is true there is safety in numbers, then England's four-pronged attack will surely fork the big prize, and bring it back to Blighty?"