THERE is an audible level of disappointment when two English clubs are drawn together in the Champions League. You don’t enter the globe’s foremost football competition to face teams you’ve shared Simod Cup history with, but the draw is the draw. Tottenham’s tie with Manchester City this month is just the latest entry in an old story, so here’s a quick trip down the rue du memory.
Origins
Back in the old European Cup days it was extremely difficult to be drawn against a team from your own league because you only got one entry to the competition. The one exception was if a country was providing both the defending European champions and a different team as their reigning league winners, and even then they still had to be paired against each other in a completely open draw. That scenario came to pass for English clubs just once, in autumn 1978, when Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest faced 1977 and 1978 European champions Liverpool in the first round. To say it was the tie of the round may seem unfair to Linfield vs Lillestrom or Omonia vs Bohemians, but there we go. Understandably, Liverpool were the pre-match favourites but rather than take a manageable 1-0 defeat in the first leg at the City Ground, they hunted for an equaliser and were hit by an 87th minute sucker punch from Colin Barrett. The second leg at Anfield ended goalless and Liverpool were out, though it would be 1983 before a non-English team were champions of Europe again.
Ghosts
The next all-English tie came in the Champions League in 2004, when Arsenal’s Invincibles were rendered very much vincible by Chelsea and Wayne Bridge. We didn’t really know at the time, but this was the high-water mark for Arsene Wenger’s team, even though they did reach the continental final two years later. Chelsea were just months away from appointing Jose Mourinho as their manager and that ushered in an era of Champions League matches with Rafa Benitez’s Liverpool that still colours many people’s view of all-English ties even to this day. Between April 2005 and May 2007 Chelsea and Liverpool played six times in the Champions League (four times in semi-finals, twice in the group stage) and the matches contained a total of three goals, with none of them scored by the away team.
One of those three goals was probably not even a legitimate effort, Luis Garcia’s ghost goal at Anfield in 2005 that took Liverpool to the final. By the end of the run, most of the continent was sick to death of the seemingly endless, brutal, battles between the two sides. In the words of Jorge Valdano after the 2007 semis, “Chelsea and Liverpool are the clearest, most exaggerated example of the way football is going: very intense, very collective, very tactical, very physical, and very direct," he added. "But, a short pass? Noooo. A feint? Noooo. A change of pace? Noooo. A one-two? A nutmeg? A backheel? Don't be ridiculous. None of that.”
On this day in 2004, Wayne Bridge sent Chelsea into the Champions League semi-finals with this strike v Arsenal… https://t.co/NOfD2yyHZM
— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) April 6, 2016
Rebirth
Perhaps Valdano’s lament had some impact. Mourinho left Chelsea a few months later and since then, all-English games in the Champions League have in fact acted as some vague guarantee of entertainment. From 2008 through to the Liverpool versus Manchester City quarter-final last season, the 14 matches between English teams have produced 46 goals, an average of 3.3 per game, with even Chelsea and Liverpool managing to conjure a 4-4 draw at Stamford Bridge in 2009.
We’ve also seen arguably the most dramatic penalty shootout in Champions League history (cut to: John Terry in the Moscow rain), the apotheosis of Manchester United’s Rooney-and-Ronaldo era counter-attacking, when they won 3-1 at Arsenal in the 2009 semi-final and last season’s monumental clash between Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool and Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City. Eleven years on from European ties at Anfield being described by Valdano as like "a shit hanging from a stick", the continent was enthralled by the intensity of the football produced by England’s two best teams on the biggest stage of all.
2019
And so to the present day: Tottenham against Manchester City for a place in the Champions League semi-finals. On one hand, what a European debut for Spurs’ new ground, gleaming and shimmering in all the right places, but on the other, Manchester City are tantalisingly close to making quadruple-based history this season. City’s current goals per game rate of 3.25 per game is the second best ever recorded in a single season in the Champions League and is significantly better than Tottenham’s meagre 1.63.
The Premier League game between the sides in London this season was a bleak affair on an NFL-damaged Wembley pitch, which saw Tottenham manage just one shot on target in the entire game and lose 1-0. There are no guarantees in football but there is almost no chance the upcoming Champions League games between the sides will not improve on that match. To allay Jorge Valdano’s fears, there will be numerous short passes, feints and changes of pace, and the achingly modern Tottenham Hotspur Stadium contains no sticks to hang anything from.
