European Champions

European Champions

With the European Championships drawing to a close, attention is turning back to the domestic teams across Europe and the transfer market slowly begins to warm up. So far there hasn’t been all that much movement, much of the talent across Europe has been occupied in Switzerland and Austria, but in the next few weeks the transfers that will shape the coming season will be made.

At this stage things are more or less as they finished, according to Blue Square Football Betting, Manchester United are the favourites to win everything. They are marginal favourites for the Champions League, but one has to imagine that if the Christiano Ronaldo debacle gets settled with the player leaving Manchester then things might look slightly different.

This far out, impossible as it is to make any predictions, it seems like Real might be worth keeping an eye on. In recent seasons they haven’t quite performed as they would like in regards to the European game, and that won’t last forever. Having won La Liga for the second time in a row, this is the season that Real will be looking to launch themselves at European glory again. If they manage to secure the signing of Christiano Ronaldo their odds will shorten, but either way they are going to be threatening.

European football seems to go in cycles, we had an all Spanish Champions League final, then an all Italian final, and now an all English final, and each time the press comment about which league is the powerhouse of European football. In the current climate with so much money sloshing around in the Premier League, it seems unlikely that things will change as rapidly, but it says something about the financial situation of Real Madrid if they’re willing, and in a position, to lay out 70 or 80 million on a single player.

The key team in the coming season is going to be Valencia, a team that were recently one of the biggest in Europe endured a horrific season and now find themselves in ownership of a ridiculously talented squad and a growing amount of debt. Talents such as Villa and Silva have put themselves in the shop window, and the clubs that secure their signings will have secured significant bargains.

Looking further down the list of entrants it’s difficult to see beyond the usual contenders, Real and Barcelona from Spain, the big four from England, Bayern, and Inter. Four of those eight teams will make up the semi-finals whatever happens, and it’s not particularly revolutionary to say so. Which will get furthest is down in no small part to luck, but the new faces (or in United’s case, whether they can keep the old faces) will have a large hand in deciding how the next season pans out.