Champions League regulars and how longs it's been since they won their league

PunkScott

PunkScott

Well-Known Member
A thread to irritate people.

What clubs are regulars in Champions League yet haven't won their leagues for an age?

Leverkusen are the only team to have got to a final despite never having won their domestic top flight

Liverpool and Tottenham played each other in a final and at the time it was 30 years for Liverpool and 60 for Tottenham.

For what it is worth, I don't mind clubs getting in from finish 4th in their league, but them being prioritised over clubs who win things is stupid.
 
KopGer said:
Sevilla was about 1949 or something - pretty sure it’s their only top flight title too.
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Granted they have Madrid and Barcelona to contend with, but that is a shocker considering how dominant they are in the UEFA/Europa
 
12 times Leverkusen have been in it, surprisingly only 6 Sevilla.

Have never won Bundesliga Leverkusen.
 
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Lyon won like 7 in a row in the 00s but I think that’s been their only league titles in history.
Last one was 07-08
 
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PunkScott said:
A thread to irritate people.

What clubs are regulars in Champions League yet haven't won their leagues for an age?

Leverkusen are the only team to have got to a final despite never having won their domestic top flight

Liverpool and Tottenham played each other in a final and at the time it was 30 years for Liverpool and 60 for Tottenham.

For what it is worth, I don't mind clubs getting in from finish 4th in their league, but them being prioritised over clubs who win things is stupid.
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Like the Luxembourg League Cup?

If there is one! ;)
 
El Jock Grande Sabia said:
My take on it? How should a team that hasn't won their respective league for 30 years be able to be crowned Champions League winners? The clue is in the very name of the competition.
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I know what you mean like, just wondering how many won the Cup Winners Cup who never won their Cup?
 
Think all Champions go straight to group stage with previous year winners. Everyone else enters al qualifiers dependent on country coefficient . Only my humble opinion of course
 
aghalee_hero said:
If they changed it to Champions only the same people would be saying the competition is still shite, because it actually would be then.
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Debatable, my take on it is that it would see a greater distribution of talent & wealth across all the leagues as players will want to play in it.

Think European Cup, you had Eastern European teams & Balkan teams competing as well. Even the first CL had the champions of 8 countries, it must have made it much more fascinating & fresh.

However, Uefa have gone too far & the money involved for the top 5 leagues means it’ll never return to that kind of set up. Perhaps it’s just nostalgia on my part.

Not complaining, I do love the CL but feel it would be more appropriate to call it the European Cup these days!.
 
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erskine bear said:
Debatable, my take on it is that it would see a greater distribution of talent & wealth across all the leagues as players will want to play in it.

Think European Cup, you had Eastern European teams & Balkan teams competing as well. Even the first CL had the champions of 8 countries, it must have made it much for fascinating & fresh.

However, Uefa have gone too far & the money involved for the top 5 leagues means it’ll never return to that kind of set up.

Not complaining, I do love the CL but feel it would be more appropriate to call it the European Cup these days!.
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Your second part is correct, the big teams are too big now. There is far more money in the CL now because most of the big teams from each league are in it, only one from each and the sponsorship will go way down and cause a football recession across the board. Don't think it would level out again tbh but you never know!
 
Best matches atmosphere wise are in the qualifiers really, many famous old Clubs playing each other - still be intimidating to visit some places and tricks being pulled, no red carpet and all this like the Group Stages onwards.
 
To be honest does it really matter that these teams aren't champions? It's purely a branding nowadays and nothing else.

It's not the 1980s anymore. There's no appetite for straight knockout european tournaments anymore from the clubs, television and most of the fanbase.

Those harping back to "how much better it was" back then really have the rose tinted glasses on. We had 17 home games in europe for the entirety of the 1980s, some seasons only having one game per season. We've played more than that at Ibrox in europe since Gerrard arrived. European football is vital to us financially nowadays, the more fixtures we can guarantee for ourselves the better.
 
aghalee_hero said:
Your second part is correct, the big teams are too big now. There is far more money in the CL now because most of the big teams from each league are in it, only one from each and the sponsorship will go way down and cause a football recession across the board. Don't think it would level out again tbh but you never know!
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Fair enough mate, good points!.
 
El Jock Grande Sabia said:
Thats a slightly different set of circumstances though. We didn't qualify for that for finishing a distant third or fourth in league.
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Was just wondering how many mate, like when people say bring it back - how many times would the actual Cup Winners be in it?

Personally find it amazing Leverkusen have been in the CL Group Stages 12 times yet they have never won the German League in their history, only been runners up 5 times as well - been in CL Group Stages same number of times as Red Star/Partizan/Zagreb and Split combined.
 
PunkScott said:
A thread to irritate people.

What clubs are regulars in Champions League yet haven't won their leagues for an age?

Leverkusen are the only team to have got to a final despite never having won their domestic top flight

Liverpool and Tottenham played each other in a final and at the time it was 30 years for Liverpool and 60 for Tottenham.

For what it is worth, I don't mind clubs getting in from finish 4th in their league, but them being prioritised over clubs who win things is stupid.
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On a related note, when Man U beat Bayern in Barcelona, neither side had won their league.
 
albertz81 said:
To be honest does it really matter that these teams aren't champions? It's purely a branding nowadays and nothing else.
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I think it does when it comes to treatment. I'm not arsed if a 4th place team go on to win it, but it does bother me if they are given an "easier" ride than a team that won something.
 
PunkScott said:
For what it is worth, I don't mind clubs getting in from finish 4th in their league, but them being prioritised over clubs who win things is stupid.
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Should that also apply to the winners of the Gibraltan, Andorran and Liechtenstein leagues?

Rightly or wrongly there’s a sliding scale of quality and when we have the Yahoos bungling out in the qualifiers to the likes of FC Cluj and Ferencvaros it’s difficult to make an argument that they’re more worthy of an automatic place / easier route than the likes of Leverkusen, Chelsea, Milan, etc.

This is why we have coefficients.

Our efforts in Europe have already helped add a second CL qualifying spot and if we continue in that vein we can look forward to automatic entry in the very near future.

I’m okay with that.
 
Mickey Donovan said:
Because they're better probably.
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Are they not better, in part, because they have continuous access to millions of Euros every year, by being pretty-much guaranteed participation in the Champions League? Teams from smaller leagues could arguably be able to attract better players if they were guaranteed direct access to the Champions League and it's cash by winning their domestic leagues, thereby strengthening the league as a whole rather than having a select few clubs stockpiling the best players. You could end up having strong, competitive leagues across Europe, rather than having just 5 leagues that are considered "elite", with everyone else sitting below them.
 
PunkScott said:
I think it does when it comes to treatment. I'm not arsed if a 4th place team go on to win it, but it does bother me if they are given an "easier" ride than a team that won something.
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The Champions League has been open to non Champions since 1997/98, I don't think being in it due to being league champions should mean anything these days since most the teams nowadays aren't.

I do however agree to an extent that the way it's setup now is unfairly skewed to let 4th sides from bigger nations an open invitation to the competition proper over league champions from a country like ours.

However I think it would take a massive opening up of the competition numbers wise to allievate that, which i don't think will happen.
 
Bob Belcher said:
Are they not better, in part, because they have continuous access to millions of Euros every year, by being pretty-much guaranteed participation in the Champions League? Teams from smaller leagues could arguably be able to attract better players if they were guaranteed direct access to the Champions League and it's cash by winning their domestic leagues, thereby strengthening the league as a whole rather than having a select few clubs stockpiling the best players. You could end up having strong, competitive leagues across Europe, rather than having just 5 leagues that are considered "elite", with everyone else sitting below them.
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Wrong way round. CL money is a handy bonus to the really big teams not the reason they're rich.

That money is available in the CL because of the fact all the top supported teams in the world basically take part.

No TV supplier is going to be queuing up to pay for a bunch of diddy teams fighting it out for a chance to lose 10-0 to Barca.
 
Champions League is such a misnomer it's just surpsing they haven't come up with a new name before now. If only the name Europa League hadn't been used.
 
HandsomeHead said:
Should that also apply to the winners of the Gibraltan, Andorran and Liechtenstein leagues?
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yes.

They might get tanked 10-0 every game they play but winning their league should count more than finishing 4th in another.

Even if it’s a case of starting in a later qualifying round and they still get smashed all over by the runner ups in the bigger leagues.
 
Jazzman said:
Think all Champions go straight to group stage with previous year winners. Everyone else enters al qualifiers dependent on country coefficient . Only my humble opinion of course
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What I've said for years. Champions get in CL (but still some qualifiers as there are 60 countries in UEFA!!) and the extra spaces go to the teams not champions based on their nation's seeding.
 
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