Sevillistas aren’t the only Spanish football fans celebrating the team’s seventh Europa League triumph via a penalty shootout victory over AS Roma. FA president Javier Tebas must be over the moon that a Liga Santander team has captured one of the continent’s three premier competitions. Over the last three seasons, the country’s football rating has suffered a succession of setbacks. The departure of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi was as big a body blow as the Covid 19 pandemic, with La Liga clubs slower to recover than their Premier League rivals.
Sevilla’s serial success is a timely reminder to continental rivals that Spanish sides aren’t down and out. Though Real Madrid and Barcelona are not the fearsome opponents who won a combined eleven Champions League crowns this century compared to five times by English Premier League sides and thrice by Italian Serie A teams, teams from La Liga still pack a punch. Remember, over the same time frame, Liga Santander sides dominated the Europa League even more emphatically.
Sevilla’s seven trophies are augmented by three from Atletico Madrid and one each for Valencia and Villarreal. EPL sides only have four triumphs, with Chelsea winning the accolade with Rafa Benitez nine years after he masterminded Valencia’s 2004 title, and repeating the feat with Maurizio Sarri in 2019/19. Manchester United won the trophy with Jose Mourinho in 2016/17. On multiple occasions, these Spanish sides overcome beat Premier League opposition on their road to success.
Though La Liga fans no longer routinely dismiss the Premier League on account of their supposed continental superiority – strengthened by La Roja’s Euro 2008 and 2012 victories, room for a case for the division exists unless Manchester City can put the argument to bed by emphatically subduing Inter Milan in Istanbul on June 10.
Messi’s decision to swap the Camp Nou for the Parc des Princes wasn’t just because then Barcelona president Joseph Bartomeu couldn’t pay his wages, Argentina’s World Cup winning captain had suffered annual Champions League quarterfinals heartache to the likes of AS Roma and Bayern Munich. He had also seen average Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid sides relegate Barcelona to the back burner. In other words, Messi was at least in part fleeing from sporting mediocrity.
This season both Atletico Madrid and Barcelona failed to get out of their Champions League groups. Wanda Metropolitano boss Diego Simeone was lost for words as to how the 2014 losing finalists could finish bottom of a group including Belgium’s Club Brugge, Germany’s Bayer Leverkusen and Portugal’s Porto. For the better part of the last two decades, such an outcome was unthinkable. Barcelona meanwhile succumbed to eventual finalists Inter Milan and quarterfinalists Bayern Munich.
A good amount of humble pie was consumed when Serie A qualified five teams for the semifinals of Europe’s three premier competitions compared to just two from La Liga. Sighs of relief greeted Sevilla’s elimination of Juventus and AS Roma, especially coming in the aftermath of Manchester City’s 4-1 aggregate annihilation of Real Madrid.
Overall, the Andalusians’ success ought to force EPL teams to do some soul searching. This season both Arsenal and Manchester United took turns as bookmakers favourites to win the Europa League only to flounder. Don’t know which set of fans should be more disappointed: Red Devils fans who witnessed their club knocked out by then relegation threatened Sevilla weeks after ousting La Liga champs Barcelona, or Gunners aficionados who were stunned by Portugal’s Sporting Lisbon?
