5 Premier League teams made the Champions League knockout stage!

Today, soccer friends, is a great day. A glorious day. Perhaps the finest day for English football since Bobby Moore lifted that golden trophy (the World Cup; not the bracelet). When the draw for the knockout stages of the Champions League takes place on Monday, England will have an unprecedented five sides in the draw for the last 16. Ticker tape! Trumpets!

In part, this is down to circumstance. No nation has ever had the chance to send five through to the knockouts, since no nation has ever had five teams in the group stages. England nearly managed it in 2005-06, after Liverpool won the Champions League the previous season, but failed to qualify through their league position. They had to slog through all three qualifying rounds, and managed it, but Everton couldn’t make their way past Villarreal in the playoffs. So the balance was maintained at four.

Trends in knockout football tournaments are always slightly wobbly things to read. They’re small, they constantly change formats, and they’re vulnerable to the whims of luck, referees, and the occasional volcano. But allowing for a certain squishiness, and working from 1999-00, when the tournament began to allow more than two teams per league, the record of English sides is divisible into three distinct phases. Between ‘99-00 and ‘03-04, English sides did okay, and sometimes one reached the semifinals. And from ‘09-10 until last season’s competition, English sides have done okay, and sometimes one has reached the semifinals. Or even the final.

But for five seasons in between, ‘04-05 to ‘08-09 inclusive, England sustained a remarkably consistent presence in the Champions League knockouts. They had at least one team in every final from 2005 to 2009, and two in 2008. All four English competitors reached the quarterfinals in every season but ‘05-06, and for three straight seasons between ‘06-07 and ‘08-09, three out of four semifinalists came from the Premier League.

When we say “all four English competitors”, what we really mean is “Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, and Chelsea”. This European hegemony was matched at a domestic level: between ‘03-04 and ‘08-09, the Premier League’s Big Four finished as the Premier League’s top four in all but one season, ‘04-05. As noted above, this didn’t prevent Liverpool taking their place in next season’s competition.

This consistency was supported, for the most part, by consistency and quality through the squads and staff. Across these five European seasons, United had first Ruud van Nistelrooy and then Cristiano Ronaldo leading the line, with Alex Ferguson backed by Carlos Queiroz in the dugout. Liverpool had Rafa Benitez, who arrived having won a UEFA Cup and La Liga double and won the Champions League in his first season. Arsenal were coming off their invincible season, and hadn’t yet congealed into the sometimes brilliant, sometimes hilarious bag of nerves we know and love today.

Chelsea weren’t quite as consistent on the managerial front, as Jose Mourinho was sent on his way in Sept. 2007 and replaced by Avram Grant, Luiz Felipe Scolari, and everybody’s favourite caretaker Guus Hiddink. But the spine of Mourinho’s team remained in place throughout, to the point that Grant nearly became a Champions League-winning manager.

It was also a slightly volatile time for the other big beasts of European football. Bayern Munich only made one semifinal, in ‘07-08, and Real Madrid never once made it past the last 16. Barcelona won the thing twice and made the semifinals once, but were also knocked out twice in the last 16.

So what changed? Football is generally cyclical, and the Premier League’s European dominance ended around the same time that the Big Four became the Hey, Now It’s A Big Five, Oh No, Hang On, Maybe A Six. Manchester City were oilgarch’d in the summer of 2008, cracked the top four in ‘10-11, and won the title the following season. Meanwhile, as Liverpool struggled to find the right replacement for Benitez and Chelsea began to chew through managers, Spurs began to make some noise. More recently United have had the problem of replacing Alex Ferguson.

English sides have still put together respectable European campaigns, of course: United reached the final in ‘10-11 and the semis in ‘13-14, City reached the semis in ‘15-16, and Chelsea won the whole shebang in 2012. But the overall consistency has drained away.

Meanwhile, the elite of the rest of Europe have consolidated their positions. With each season that passes, European football looks more like a network of transcontinental superclubs, dominant within and economically dislocated from their domestic leagues. This leads, naturally, to a general lack of space in the knockouts. Perhaps it also means that English teams are more likely to find themselves fighting on multiple fronts come the end of the season. Fighting five other strong teams for four qualification spots is not something Paris Saint-Germain generally have to worry about.

But with all that said, is this the season that English clubs come back in force? It’s not just that the numbers are in their favour, with five sides through to the last 16. It’s that all of them look equipped to make a decent showing. City have started the season in scintillating form, and United, though slightly more workmanlike and shot through with the neuroses of late-era Mourinho, are better now than at any point since Ferguson’s departure. Liverpool are a problem for any defence, including sometimes their own; Chelsea have Eden Hazard, who makes anything possible; and, Tottenham have already taken a win and a draw from Real Madrid, the reigning champions.

(Arsenal, meanwhile, are in the Europa League, which saves the Premier League from at least one certain humiliation.)

After a few turbulent seasons, the Premier League has emerged into its latest form: a heavily-funded Elite Manager Thunderbowl. It suddenly has five teams in the Champions League, all of which are relatively settled, have good-to-excellent coaching, and deep, strong squads. For those strange people who like to cheer all of a nation’s sides in Europe, regardless of allegiance, this must feel like an early Christmas. For everybody else, we’ve probably got a decent shot at getting one or two of those tense, spiteful, dramatic, thoroughly enjoyable England-on-England ties that used to come round regularly. Liverpool vs. Chelsea, again and again and again, until the continent begs for mercy. A spectre is haunting Europe: the spectre of the ghost goal.