What is happening this week in the first leg of the Champions League round of 16 is astonishing. Six clubs from the absurdly rich English Premier League are competing. Nobody wins, sometimes there are harsh claps.

Tottenham and Chelsea lose 5-2, Manchester City are ‘torn to pieces’

Liverpool FC lost 0-1 at Galatasaray. Tottenham Hotspur went down 5-2 at Atlético Madrid, as did Chelsea FC at Paris Saint-Germain. And Manchester City clearly loses the annual arm wrestling match with Real Madrid, 3-0.

“And they say that the Premier League is the best league in the world,” mocks the “Sun” about the Champions League abrasion. Man City was “torn to pieces” by Real, complains the Telegraph, while the Guardian believes that Pep Guardiola’s team was “destroyed” and that the coach was “destroyed” by his offensive line-up “exposed as a tactical novice” had been.

That’s the tone set by the British: rough and brutal. Those who have the greatest financial resources are expected to deliver maximum performance. The English burning of money is more blatant than ever.

Kramer on England clubs: “Almost uniquely bad in the world”

In January, the two Amazon Prime experts Christoph Kramer and Mats Hummels were critical of the Premier League. “In my opinion, the English league is not good enough for what is put into it,” said ex-professional Kramer and made a visual comparison:

“If you get me for two million, you’ll say: ‘What a great player.’ If you get me for 25 million, you’ll say: ‘What a sausage.’ When I evaluate the price-performance ratio, what is happening at Tottenham and Manchester United is almost uniquely bad in the world.”

Tottenham invested around 250 million euros in new players before this season, Leipzig’s Xavi Simons alone cost 65 million. The Londoners are currently ranked 16th in the table. in acute danger of relegation, and Simons scored a paltry three goals in 37 appearances.

Or Liverpool. Last summer, almost half a billion (!) was donated, 125 million of which went to Florian Wirtz. But the season is like a rolling course, the bankruptcy in Istanbul – at a club from a mediocre European league – fits into the picture. The path of this team leads “nowhere,” writes the “Liverpool Echo”.

In 15 years, the English have only won the Champions League four times

The English are masters of spending money. What they are rarely: champions on the international football field. The Champions League will “not be English-dominated,” noted Hummels.

In fact, Premier League clubs have only won the trophy four times in the past 15 years (Chelsea 20212 and 2021, Liverpool 2019, ManCity 2023). FC Bayern managed this twice (2013 and 2020), Paris once (2025), the outliers were the insatiable Spaniards with eight triumphs.

Success cannot be bought, of course. But in football turbo-capitalism, a lot of money drastically increases the likelihood of success. With this mechanism, the highly commercialized premier class was orchestrated to cool perfection, the problem: nobody likes perfection.

Bodö/Glimt writes a very old, very kitschy football fairy tale

All the more beneficial for the battered football soul is a phenomenon like FK Bodö/Glimt, who are on the verge of reaching the Champions League quarter-finals after a 3-0 win against Sporting Lisbon. On the way to the round of 16, the Norwegian sensational underdog already beat heavyweights such as Atléticio, ManCity and Inter Milan.

Bodö/Glimt writes a story that shouldn’t even exist today. It’s a very old school, very kitschy football fairy tale. How nice.