The Premier League champions of 2015-16 play the winners of one of the greatest FA Cup finals. One of the original two super-clubs play the most successful Welsh side of all time. The seventh-most successful side in league history play a former Uefa Cup winner. Sunday’s Championship fixture list serves as a reminder of how fortunate the English (and Welsh) league is to have such depth – and perhaps also as a warning.
All six teams in action – Leicester, Coventry, Leeds, Cardiff, Sunderland and Ipswich – have won the league title or the FA Cup or both. Of the 24 sides in the Championship, only Plymouth have never won the league or reached a domestic cup final. The 2.Bundesliga has its share of fallen giants but nowhere else in the world is the spread of honours so great. And nowhere else in the world do games in even the fourth flight average more than 5,700 attendances as they did in League Two last season.
Longevity helps but depth is a key feature of the English game. It grew up organically. Many of the clubs predated the Football League: it was established to serve them, rather than the other way round. There was never a sense, as when Serie A or the Bundesliga were formed, that each region should be represented or that there should be one club per city.
More than that, there was an early recognition of the risk of consolidating resources at a handful of major clubs and so the regulation was put in place that 25% of gate receipts should go to the away side. In the days before broadcast rights deals, that was enough to prevent hegemonies developing.
The notion of a “super league” within the English top flight was coined by George Edwards in the Derby Evening Telegraph in 1969. It referred initially to Leeds and Liverpool, two clubs capable of attracting vast attendances who had put in place systems that seemed capable of replicating – nothing like the financial superiority super-clubs have now. Edwards was prescient given how Liverpool would enjoy an unprecedented dominance over the two decades that followed, but English football has historically been resistant to super-clubs – the season he was previewing would end with an eighth different champion club in 10 years.
The most successful club are Manchester United, who have won 20 of the 124 championships contested: 16.1%. Of Europe’s top 10 leagues by Uefa coefficient, only in France has the most dominant side won a lower proportion of titles – and the rise of Paris Saint-Germain since the Qatari takeover will soon change that. In Germany, Bayern Munich have won 53.3% of all Bundesliga titles.
Or look at how dominant the three most successful sides have been. In England, United, Liverpool and Arsenal have claimed 41.9% of league titles between them. Only in France and Switzerland of the other top 10 leagues is that figure lower than 70%, and in Portugal it is as high as 97.8%. Twenty-four sides have won the English league. France is next on that list with 18, with nine in Spain, seven in the Netherlands and five in Portugal.
That perhaps explains why hostility to the European Super League is most universal in England. A sense lingers that no club should be too elevated over another, even if that notion of equality has been challenged over the past 40 years. The regulation on sharing gate receipts was abolished in 1983. The Premier League broke away in 1992, securing a greater share of revenues for the elite but, in Richard Scudamore’s time as chief executive, at least some semblance of competitive balance was retained.
The top club took roughly 1.8 times what the bottom side made in broadcast revenues – compared with a ratio of 12:1 at one point in Spain, now reduced to around 4:1. But every recent move, from the decision that overseas broadcast rights should no longer be equally divided to the expansion of the Champions League, is to enrich the richest.
(Only professional seasons considered)
England
Manchester United: 16.1% (20)
Top three: 41.9% (52)
Different champions: 24
124 professional seasons
Spain
Real Madrid: 38% (35)
Top three: 79.3% (73)
Different champions: nine
92 professional seasons
Italy
Juventus: 38.5% (35)
Top three: 74.7% (68)
Different champions: 12
91 professional seasons
Germany
Bayern Munich: 53.3% (32)
Top three: 70.0% (42)
Different champions: 12
60 professional seasons
Netherlands
Ajax: 43.1% (28)
Top three: 92.3% (60)
Different champions: seven
65 professional seasons
France
Paris Saint-Germain: 13.1% (11)
Top three: 35.7% (30)
Different champions: 18
84 professional seasons
Portugal
Benfica: 42.7% (38)
Top three: 97.8% (87)
Different champions: five
89 professional seasons
Belgium
Anderlecht: 36.7% (18)
Top three: 77.6% (38)
Different champions: 10
49 professional seasons
Scotland
Rangers: 43.9% (54)
Top three: 89.4% (110)
Different champions: 10
123 professional seasons
Switzerland
Grasshopper 21.8% (19)
Top three: 54% (47)
Different champions: 15
87 professional seasons
Between league football restarting after the war to Edwards defining a “super league” in 1969, there were 12 different English champions and no club won it more than five times.
From 1969-70 to the present day, more than twice as long a period, there have been 11 different champions. Since Roman Abramovich’s arrival at Chelsea in 2003 carried English football into a new phase in which the capacity to spend was decoupled from success on the pitch, 17 of the 20 titles have been divided between three clubs.
Which brings us back to Leicester, the most unlikely champions ever, a reminder that football has still not been entirely tamed by money, and a reminder too of how insecure life can be for the non-elite. Enzo Maresca has arrived as coach as part of a reset that has also included the signings of Conor Coady and Harry Winks, but they are one of perhaps a dozen sides with realistic aspirations of promotion.
That sense of instability is how it used to be and how it should be. Success shouldn’t just be for the elite; no side should be effectively guaranteed its place in the top four or six for reasons of wealth alone. As the Premier League bestrides the world, richer now than it has ever been, it should be remembered that its greatest strength has always been its hinterland, that such a multitude of clubs have, for a century and a half, been able to dream of glory once in every two or three generations.
Manchester City and Newcastle, perhaps, would argue that is what they are now doing, but it used to be achievable by uncovering three or four bright young players or unearthing a messianic manager rather than requiring the intercession of a repressive petrostate.
It is far too simplistic to say the Championship is what football was before money contorted it, but in its unpredictability it offers a hint of what football used to be and what it perhaps still should be. It may be packed with clubs recalling past glories and desperate to escape it, but it shouldn’t be cherished any the less for that.
• This article was amended on 6 August 2023. An earlier version said that Rotherham had never reached a domestic cup final; in fact, they contested the inaugural League Cup final in 1961.
