Premier League’s intensity comes at expense of quality vs. Europe’s elite

“I hear a lot of times about the intensity in the Premier League when none of you have been in La Liga or the Bundesliga to know how intense it is,” Pep Guardiola told a roomful of British journalists last week. He added, “I think the intensity in Italy and other places is quite the same.” Then he took his Manchester City team to Barcelona and was thrashed 4-0

Guardiola’s words reawakened an old debate: Is the Premier League especially intense? And what does “intensity” even mean in soccer? I’ve tried to answer this question, with the help of eyewitness reports and a dollop of data.

Before we talk about intensity, the first thing to say is that the Premier League is now weaker than its big rivals. The UEFA coefficients ranking, which measures clubs’ performances in European competitions, has the Premier League in third place behind Spain and Germany. Looking at just the last three seasons, Italy outperforms England too. The only English club ranked in UEFA’s European top 10 is Chelsea, at number eight. Manchester United ranks 22nd, two places below FC Basel of Switzerland.

The Premier League’s European decline is relatively new. It seems to correlate with the fading of England’s so-called “golden generation” (notably Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, and the Man United cohort of Paul Scholes, David Beckham et. al.) as well as with the reign of Cristiano Ronaldo at Real Madrid since 2009 and Leo Messi at Barcelona.

Seven English teams featured in the seven Champions League finals from 2005 through 2011; none has been in the four finals since 2013. There is now frighteningly little English talent around: the leading English clubs have discarded even internationals such as Joe Hart and Jack Wilshere. Raheem Sterling and Harry Kane are very rare examples of young Englishmen who are established players at big clubs.

Premier League clubs are the biggest spenders on the global transfer market in part because they have to be: they need to import almost all their talent. Only about 35 percent of Premier League starters are Englishmen, the lowest proportion of nationals in any of Europe’s big leagues. Indeed, Germany and Spain probably produce more good players than any other country except Argentina.

Yet for all its money, the Premier League struggles to buy the very best players. “The Premier League is sold for more than its value. You can count the true top stars playing in England on the fingers of one hand,” says the German former Liverpool midfielder DidiHamann. It’s telling that Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who is a “true top star”, moved to the Premier League only this season when he was 34.

It’s quite possible that in the next few years the Premier League will narrow the gap with Spain. If we presume that Messi, 29, and Ronaldo, 31, are human, they must start fading at some point, and both are irreplaceable. The best players of the coming generation — the erratic Paul Pogba, and even Neymar — are unlikely ever to reach quite that level.