With the cup in Real Madrid's hands for the 12th time, English football comforted itself the way it knows best: with another dose of $170 million transfer targets and $250 million "war chests". Retail therapy is a way to avoid the truth about how far the Premier League is behind what we observed here on Saturday night.
In mitigation, all of Europe now lags behind Real, who have been guided back to supremacy by one of their greatest players, Zinedine Zidane - perhaps the only managerial candidate the Real players would look up to. A previously mighty Juventus, imperious in Italy, conceded more goals in the final than they had in the whole competition as they fell apart in the second half. Thus a defence that stopped Barcelona scoring over 180 minutes were smashed to bits by Cristiano Ronaldo (twice), Casemiro and Marco Asensio.
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Real Madrid claim Champions League final
Real Madrid have claimed the Champions League final with a 4-1 thumping of Juventus.
Confronted by Real's three Champions League victories in four years (Barcelona won the other), Italy, Germany and France will also be wrestling with inferiority complexes. But none has the wealth or the vanity of the Premier League, which is underperforming beyond its shores.
Manchester United's Europa League win was consoling, but United finished sixth in the Premier League in a season when Leicester City, quarter-finalists, were England's best Champions League club.
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All around the renamed National Stadium of Wales, pundits watched a tight first half of great quality and made note of the skills gap, the technical disparity, between a Juventus-Real Madrid final and the best the Premier League can currently offer. Which is not to disparage Chelsea, the champions, but rather to acknowledge the concentration of talent abroad.
Sunday morning broke with stories about United wanting Gareth Bale for $170 million and/or Kylian Mbappe for the same amount. Arsenal too are known to be chasing Mbappe for those kind of sums. Manchester City are expected to have parted with $345 million by the time the summer ends. All across the picture, gargantuan television revenues and an arms race mindset among billionaire owners will encourage Premier Club clubs to think they can spend their way to the level Real Madrid are at now.
If only it were so simple. Historically, the game's greatest players have not moved to England, except as youngsters who then became the prey of Real Madrid or Barcelona. Arguably the two greatest Premier League stars, Thierry Henry and Ronaldo, fall into this category.
The best British player of the past 10 years - Bale - moved almost inevitably to Madrid, while United's efforts to coax Neymar, Bale and Ronaldo to (or back to) England came to nought. United's answer was to overspend $155 million on Paul Pogba.
In the same context Arsenal's frantic attempts to keep their two best players in north London remind us that A-list players leave Barcelona and Madrid for England only when those Spanish giants want them to. Mesut Ozil (Real) and Alexis Sanchez (Barcelona) were surplus to requirements. Fine players - especially Sanchez - but no longer central to the plans of the selling club.
English teams are having some success in the next tier down - Kevin De Bruyne or Christian Eriksen, say - and have unearthed a few gems of their own (Harry Kane, Dele Alli). But there is probably not one starting player at Real Madrid or Barcelona who would willingly give up the shirt to come to England just for money. Toni Kroos might have joined United, but they messed it up. And United, short of strikers, ended up paying Zlatan Ibrahimovic a reported $635,000 a week at the age of 34.
This is the obstacle the Premier League will have to overcome, either by spotting the next Ronaldo or Henry before he ends up at Monaco, say, or by breeding their own, and then giving them a chance to play. English clubs are scoring low on both these counts.
In this Champions League campaign, France, which the English often look down on, led the way by supplying the competition with 75 players. The official world team of the year, meanwhile, was a Premier League-free zone: Manuel Neuer, Dani Alves, Gerard Pique, Sergio Ramos, Marcelo, Luka Modric, Kroos, Andres Iniesta, Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and Ronaldo.
One counter-point the Premier League can make is that the strength of its top six makes it much harder to win, and therefore less conducive to European success.
This time next year, we can judge the merits of more spectacular retail therapy by England's clubs.
UK Daily Telegraph
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