United Aim to Restore Premier League Pride
Although it was less than five years ago, it seems a long time since Manchester United shut Barcelona out completely in a Champions League semi-final. Since then United have been bowed by Barca in Rome, and then battered by Barca at Wembley. Last season things got even worse with United being eliminated at the Champions League group stage, losing in Basel, before Atletic Bilbao, currently 15th in La Liga, completely outplayed the world’s most valuable football club both home and away.
The focus of tonight’s game with Real Madrid has been, to a great extent, Cristiano Ronaldo. It is the Portugese winger who perhaps best exemplifies the decline of United, and along with it the reputation of the Premier League. When Ronaldo soared down both flanks for United, English clubs and the Premier League reigned supreme, with three out of four of the 2025-08 Champions League semi-finalists being English. As soon as his £80 million transfer to Real Madrid was completed, the balance of power shifted tangibly and irrevocably to Spain. United haven’t been the same force since.
With Chelsea and Manchester City having already crashed out of this season’s Champions League, and with both United and Arsenal facing tough looking last sixteen ties, there is the prospect of all English clubs being eliminated from the Champions League before the quarter-finals stage. This would be a tremendously poor return for a league that we are perennially told is the best in the world, and would seriously harm the Premier League’s UEFA co-efficient. When United take to the field this evening, while their focus will be on their own interests, there has rarely been a fixture in which they have more explicitly represented the entirety of English football.
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