The 2017-18 Champions League will be won in Kiev, Ukraine -- the first time the competition's finale has ventured that far east for a decade, when Manchester United and Chelsea played out a 1-1 draw in Moscow before the former triumphed on penalties.
That felt the Premier League's high-water mark; not only were its two best sides competing for the right to be the best in Europe, it was also the year when the Premier League overtook La Liga in UEFA's coefficients system to be considered, officially, the best league around.
Since then, the performance of Premier League clubs has been distinctly underwhelming. Manchester United twice reached the final, where they were defeated by Pep Guardiola's Barcelona, while Chelsea somehow managed to defeat Bayern Munich on penalties having been outplayed for 120 minutes.
But even that now seems like a distant memory, and things have become even worse in the subsequent five years. Since 2012, only four times has a Premier League side reached the quarterfinals of the competition -- Manchester United and Chelsea in 2013-14, Manchester City in 2015-16 and Leicester last year. Chelsea and City reached the semis, but none have progressed to the final. Spain has contributed six of the ten finalists in that time, with Germany and Italy providing two each.
Reasons for the English underperformance have been debated at length, and there's significant evidence that suggests the competitiveness of the Premier League, with multiple sides in with a chance of winning the title each season, genuinely harms its clubs' ability to compete in continental competition.
But it is, frankly, time to stop making excuses. The Premier League now generates staggering levels of wealth, its major clubs have been spending huge sums in the pursuit of glory, and it can now also depend upon -- by a distance -- the most exciting set of managers around.
This season, meanwhile, English clubs have an obvious head-start for simple mathematical reasons -- Manchester United won the Europa League while finishing outside the top four, and therefore join Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea and Tottenham as contenders this time around, the first time the Premier League has had five teams entering the group stage. It's about time someone stepped up.
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