SAY something often enough and it might just come true. There are few things which parochial rights-holding broadcasters have loved to do more over the years than hailing the FA Premier League as the greatest league in the world but for once all that hype and hyperbole might just be justified.
Say what you like about the Scottish men’s game, which is basking in a decent domestic season whilst but licking its wounds in the wake of the kicking in Kazakhstan, and this week of all weeks it occurs to me that these really are halcyon days for the sport south of the border.
Tottenham Hotspur have joined Liverpool in the first all-English Champions League final for 11 years. Fast forward another 24 hours and Arsenal and Chelsea may have played their way into an all-English Europa League final too.
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Okay, so Spanish teams had three of the four teams in 2015-16 and 2013-14 but providing all four teams contesting for Europe’s two major club honours takes some doing.
Scotland, as if we need reminding, hasn’t had a team strong enough to reach a European final since 2008. No wonder our clubs were so keen to promote the idea of a third continental club competition, working title UEL2, which is due to come on stream from 2021 to 2024.
While our very own Ladbrokes Premiership whips itself into a veritable frenzy about the battle to avoid the play-off and a battle between Aberdeen and Kilmarnock for third, it is hard to fault the drama on offer in England’s domestic competition. A see-sawing title tussle will be decided in a sizzling last day shoot-out on a day which for once deserves the description of Super Sunday.
This has been a season where Liverpool and Manchester City have redefined the notion of excellence. Liverpool could be crowned the best team in Europe and it still might not be enough to end their 29-year wait for a top flight Premier League title.
They have lost one match all season long, to City on January 3. When the heat has been on, they haven’t flinched - winning their last nine league matches. Yet still City have the march on them; a one point lead, and a four-goal advantage to the good. It is just the 13-match winning run for Pep and his team.
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They are in the box seat, visiting Brighton, as Liverpool face Wolves. But as anyone who watched them nervously squeeze past Leicester in midweek would attest, these matches are far from gimmes.
These are matches featuring the best players in the world, presided over by many of the game’s highest-reputation managers.
No-one epitomised the technical and tactical quality of that Leicester match than Vincent Kompany, who completed 94% of his 75 passes, long and short, and didn’t do too badly with his shot on target either. And this is a guy who is normally regarded as one of the weaker ball players in the City backline.
At least our best players, such as Ryan Fraser and Andy Robertson, are entirely capable of excelling at that level, assuming they get down there early enough to acclimatise. James Maddison, once of Aberdeen, looked likely at one stage of spoiling Pep’s party.
Dominance of continental football tends to be cyclical but it is little wonder if the brains trust at the likes of Bayern Munich, Barcelona and Juventus fear a concerted era of English dominance of the sport and are currently racking their brains to come up with a plan to do something about it.
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They would dearly love to attract England’s biggest guns into a European Super League which would become the world’s pre-eminent club league, but the FA Premiership – with at least six teams theoretically in the mix for top spot in any one campaign – may have outgrown such demands.
In fact, when you throw in the likes of Jadon Sancho getting game time in Germany and England, are well placed too to contend for major international titles. They are already World Cup holders at Under-20 level and European Champions at Under-21. While we were getting a kicking in Kazakhstan, England’s last two international matches were a 5-0 crushing of the Czech Republic and a 5-1 away win in Montenegro.
So much money is sloshing around in the coffers of English football that even middling outfits such as Wolves and Watford have become repositories of the globe’s best football talent. And if anything the gap between English teams and the rest only projects to grow rather than diminish.
Both Glasgow giants would become a force to be reckoned with if they ever found a way into this environment, but an accident of history keeps them on the outside while Swansea and Cardiff get in. Until then, the best Scottish watchers can do is settle in for Super Sunday in front of the sofa.
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