Matt Maher
Published30th May 2026, 08:00 BST
Surely it has not required Crystal Palace and Villa to win European trophies for people to realise football suffers from a serious financial imbalance?
The two clubs' respective victories in the Conference League and Europa League has prompted scrutiny on those competitions strangely absent when Chelsea and Tottenham were winning them 12 months ago.
Supporters of Palace and Villa are entitled to take a little umbrage, if they even care enough to do so. There should be no diminishing of nights which ranked among the greatest in their histories.
But it is also true that, thanks to the Premier League’s riches, they entered both competitions with an advantage over nearly all of their rivals. Freiburg’s budget, for example, is just a quarter the size of Villa’s. Unai Emery’s team were favourites from the start and if we are being honest, other than the semi-final against Nottingham Forest, another Premier League side, rarely looked troubled. The aggregate score of their knockout fixtures was 17-2.
Down in the Conference League, the financial gap between Palace and the other runners and riders was even greater.
Annoyance comes from the fact the same criticism aimed toward the Conference and Europa Leagues so rarely extends to the Champions League.
Arsenal will enter Saturday evening’s final painted as underdogs against Paris Saint-Germain and on the whole that is fair.
But it wasn’t the case when they faced Sporting Lisbon or even Atletico Madrid on route to the final, clubs over whom they held a significant financial advantage.
It might also be noted that PSG are once again being tasked with preventing an English winner of the Champions League.
Last year they beat the Gunners, Liverpool and Villa before thrashing Inter Milan in one of the most one-sided ever finals.
When it requires a club backed by an oil state to prevent the Premier League from claiming Europe’s elite competition, it should really be no surprise to find England’s top flight increasingly dominant in the second and third-tier tournaments.
It is good news for the Premier League but problematic for Uefa. Predictability is never good PR in any sport competition.
Yet these issues have been evident for some time and should have been clear when two of the Premier League’s bottom five contested last year’s Europa final.
If you’re only just figuring it out now, where have you been?
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