So, that is what has been done here. The last two games pitting the best clubs in Europe against each other have been found (friendlies excluded, only competitive matches have been counted), and the results have been compiled into a league table.
To limit the extension of the experiment, the criterion used to select the teams involved has been the number of games played in the Champions League since 1992-93. That was the year when the European Cup introduced group stages into the competition, and since then every new change in the format of the tournament has favoured that the best clubs in the continent play in it every year or almost. It has also meant that the Champions League is the only place where the best teams from different European countries can face each other. If you want to play competitively against the likes of Barcelona or Real Madrid, you just have to be in this competition, although sometimes important teams see themselves "demoted" to the Europa League.
In August 2023 the list of the 92 teams to have played 10 or more matches in the Champions League (qualifying matches excluded) since August 1992 stood as follows:
01 299 SPA Real Madrid
02 282 SPA FC Barcelona
03 282 GER Bayern Munchen
04 242 ENG Manchester United
05 216 POR FC Porto
06 214 ITA Juventus Torino
07 197 ENG Chelsea London
08 192 ITA AC Milan
09 181 ENG Arsenal London
10 153 ENG Liverpool FC
11 146 GER Borussia Dortmund
12 144 ITA Internazionale Milano
13 136 FRA Olympique Lyonnais
14 134 UKR Dynamo Kyiv
15 137 FRA Paris Saint-Germain
16 136 NET Ajax Amsterdam
17 136 POR Benfica Lisboa
18 128 GRE Olympiacos Pirea
19 122 TUR Galatasaray Istanbul
20 118 NET PSV Eindhoven
21 117 ESP Atlético Madrid
22 115 ENG Manchester City
23 112 UKR Shakhtar Donetsk
24 112 ESP Valencia CF
25 107 GER Bayer Leverkusen
26 104 ITA AS Roma
27 92 BEL Anderlecht Bruxelles
28 87 FRA Olympique Marseille
29 84 GRE Panathinaikos Athinai
30 83 FRA AS Monaco
31 82 RUS CSKA Moskva
32 78 NOR Rosenborg Trondheim
33 76 SCO Rangers Glasgow
34 74 RUS Spartak Moskva
35 72 SCO Celtic Glasgow
36 70 CZE Sparta Praha
37 66 BEL Club Brugge
38 66 GER Schalke Gelsenkirchen
39 64 POR Sporting Lisboa
40 60 ESP Sevilla CF
41 60 RUS Zenit St Petersburg
42 60 SUI FC Basel
43 58 SPA Deportivo La Coruña
44 56 RUS Lokomotiv Moskva
45 54 TUR Besiktas Istanbul
46 53 ENG Tottenham London
47 52 ITA Lazio Roma
48 50 ITA SSC Napoli
49 50 FRA OSC Lille
50 50 GER Werder Bremen
51 50 CRO Dinamo Zagreb
52 42 DEN FC Kobenhavn
53 40 SPA Villarreal CF
54 40 NET Feyenoord Rotterdam
55 40 ROM Steaua Bucuresti
56 40 TUR Fenerbahce Istanbul
57 40 SWE IFK Goteborg
58 36 GRE AEK Athinai
59 34 FRA Girondins Bordeaux
60 32 GER RB Leipzig
61 32 AUT Red Bull Salzburg
62 30 BLR BATE Borisov
63 28 CYP APOEL Nicosia
64 25 GER VfB Stuttgart
65 24 CZE Viktoria Plzen
66 24 ITA AS Fiorentina
67 23 ITA Atalanta Bergamo
68 22 ENG Leeds United
69 20 GER Borussia Monchengladbach
70 20 FRA AJ Auxerroise
71 18 SWE Malmö FF
72 18 BEL RC Genk
73 18 ISR Maccabi Haifa
74 18 ROM CFR Cluj
75 18 AUT Sturm Graz
76 18 SLN NK Maribor
77 16 GER VfL Wolfsburg
78 14 ISR Maccabi Tel-Aviv
79 14 HUN Ferencvaros Budapest
80 14 SPA Real Sociedad San Sebastián
81 14 AUT Austria Wien
82 12 SUI Young Boys Bern
83 12 CZE Slavia Praha
84 12 SER Crvena Zvezda Beograd
85 12 ESP Athletic Bilbao
86 12 POR Sporting Braga
87 12 GER Hamburger SV
88 12 SER Partizan Beograd
89 12 RUS Rubin Kazan
90 11 ITA Sampdoria Genova
91 10 ENG Leicester City
92 10 SPA Málaga CF
The following provisions and rules must be taken into account:
1 - The number of games played in the Champions League is the sole criterion for entry in the EFCL, but once a team has been entered, the last two competitive matches against the other teams will be used for this table, regardless of the tournament in which these games were played or how old these matches are. The tournaments allowed include the Champions League itself, but also the Europa League, the Conference League and the European Supercup.
Also, and very importantly, domestic matches played between teams from the same country are used, be they league, cup, league cup or supercup games. Any last two competitive matches in any competition is the absolute rule, even if they belong to two different competitions, national or international.
2 - Some teams have never played each other competitively. Valencia have never played Milan, for example, and Chelsea have never faced Dortmund, and Manchester City have only ever been pitted against Inter Milan once (the 2023 Champions League final). In these cases, any non-played games have been considered 0-0 draws. This might not be the most perfect solution, but in the absence of those data, I would rather do this than consider them unplayed "games in hand" for decades. We will just have to wait until one day these missing ties are played. This will really hurt Manchester City, for example, as they are a comparative newcomer to playing all the time against the top European teams, and because of this, they have never played against as many as 11 other teams in this compilation (Inter, Leverkusen, Benfica, PSV, Galatasaray, Anderlecht, Panathinaikos, Rosenborg, Sparta, Spartak and Rangers). That's a lot of winnable games, but if we called those "games in hand" and didn't include them even as a mere 0-0, City would be even lower in the table, 22 points worse off. Again, this is just a simulation with the available data, and it's not perfect.
3 - Some games in the table are quite old, but, again, there's nothing to be done about it except waiting for these teams to be paired up again, so that the results become more relevant. The oldest games in the table are a 1957 tie between Milan and Rangers. They haven't played each other since.
4 - On the other hand, some teams play each other very frequently, for example in England, where some clubs could face each other up to nine times in a season (Community Shield, league, FA Cup, league cup and European competition), so sometimes a result becomes the third-to-last game played between those two teams (and therefore is discarded from this table) very quickly. This happened to Chelsea and Manchester City, who played each other three times in April and May of 2021. A national supercup game, for example, is guaranteed not to last until the end of the season, because at least two league games will be played between those two teams just a few months later.
5 - When a new eligible game is played, the second-to-last match between the same teams disappears from the table to make room for the new result. This can cause swings of up to six points (actual six-pointers) if a team replaces a game they had won with one they now lose, and vice versa. Two teams tied on 60 points, for example, could end up on 57 and 63 respectively if the new game is won by the team who had lost the match due to "disappear" from the table.
1 - The number of games played in the Champions League is the sole criterion for entry in the EFCL, but once a team has been entered, the last two competitive matches against the other teams will be used for this table, regardless of the tournament in which these games were played or how old these matches are. The tournaments allowed include the Champions League itself, but also the Europa League, the Conference League and the European Supercup.
Also, and very importantly, domestic matches played between teams from the same country are used, be they league, cup, league cup or supercup games. Any last two competitive matches in any competition is the absolute rule, even if they belong to two different competitions, national or international.
2 - Some teams have never played each other competitively. Valencia have never played Milan, for example, and Chelsea have never faced Dortmund, and Manchester City have only ever been pitted against Inter Milan once (the 2023 Champions League final). In these cases, any non-played games have been considered 0-0 draws. This might not be the most perfect solution, but in the absence of those data, I would rather do this than consider them unplayed "games in hand" for decades. We will just have to wait until one day these missing ties are played. This will really hurt Manchester City, for example, as they are a comparative newcomer to playing all the time against the top European teams, and because of this, they have never played against as many as 11 other teams in this compilation (Inter, Leverkusen, Benfica, PSV, Galatasaray, Anderlecht, Panathinaikos, Rosenborg, Sparta, Spartak and Rangers). That's a lot of winnable games, but if we called those "games in hand" and didn't include them even as a mere 0-0, City would be even lower in the table, 22 points worse off. Again, this is just a simulation with the available data, and it's not perfect.
3 - Some games in the table are quite old, but, again, there's nothing to be done about it except waiting for these teams to be paired up again, so that the results become more relevant. The oldest games in the table are a 1957 tie between Milan and Rangers. They haven't played each other since.
4 - On the other hand, some teams play each other very frequently, for example in England, where some clubs could face each other up to nine times in a season (Community Shield, league, FA Cup, league cup and European competition), so sometimes a result becomes the third-to-last game played between those two teams (and therefore is discarded from this table) very quickly. This happened to Chelsea and Manchester City, who played each other three times in April and May of 2021. A national supercup game, for example, is guaranteed not to last until the end of the season, because at least two league games will be played between those two teams just a few months later.
5 - When a new eligible game is played, the second-to-last match between the same teams disappears from the table to make room for the new result. This can cause swings of up to six points (actual six-pointers) if a team replaces a game they had won with one they now lose, and vice versa. Two teams tied on 60 points, for example, could end up on 57 and 63 respectively if the new game is won by the team who had lost the match due to "disappear" from the table.
All in all, the current table reflects the status of Europe's Big Three of Real Madrid, Bayern and Barça at the top, almost always there or thereabouts for many years, and a mighty scramble behind them, both for the trophy itself and for positions in the top 8 of the EFCL, which would mean the most likely teams to make up most year's quarter-finals.
And this is it, basically. As I said, this project is merely a curiosity, and you can pick many holes in it (I will be the first to do so in other posts), so I am not claiming it should be The True Way Of Deciding Who Is The Best, but on the other hand it is comprehensive, it takes into account as many as 70 matches per team, and those games were actually won, drawn or lost, so what's the harm in drawing conclusions from them? Therefore, I will continue to treat the EFCL at least half-seriously and see where it takes us. The blog will be updated whenever new matches are played, and the league table will be moving all the time.
And this is it, basically. As I said, this project is merely a curiosity, and you can pick many holes in it (I will be the first to do so in other posts), so I am not claiming it should be The True Way Of Deciding Who Is The Best, but on the other hand it is comprehensive, it takes into account as many as 70 matches per team, and those games were actually won, drawn or lost, so what's the harm in drawing conclusions from them? Therefore, I will continue to treat the EFCL at least half-seriously and see where it takes us. The blog will be updated whenever new matches are played, and the league table will be moving all the time.
In 2021 several of these clubs tried to break away to form a European Super League, a project that was sunk by fan protests in about two days. From what we could find out about it, it wouldn't have been a true league, but it would have followed the same format of group stages followed by knockout rounds that the Champions League has now, plus I'm afraid that the vitriol directed at the ESL has now scuppered forever the idea that the top European teams play each other more often than until now, not because it's not a good idea, but because in many people's minds it could end up leading again towards the breakaway. For the record, I'm against a "closed shop" system that guarantees some clubs a permanent entry in the ESL, but I think that it makes sense that the best clubs in the continent want to play each other all the time, as they each do in their own domestic leagues.
Thanks for the time you took to look through this blog.
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