The Champions League & Wikipedia.

If you spend enough time within the labyrinth that is Wikipedia, you’re bound to stumble into something worthwhile. Fortunately for Wikipedia, most who lose themselves in the site aren’t concerned with that “worthwhile” bit. Which is how you’ll wind up with things like the Bujumbara International Airport page in your browser history, and remember it like a blackout after a drunken night on the town.

The Champions League came fast & furious yesterday, with, unthinkably, worthwhile results.

This feels straight out of The Best Eleven, the site whose tagline should be “Stuff you need to know you didn’t know you need to know.”, which is rapidly becoming a favorite at The Offside Global Headquarters (or: The Lair).

The clubs (by nation) which have participated in the Champions League group stage since 1992*:

* – Every country, obviously, has had teams in the CL qualifying rounds, while other clubs, such as Everton, would add to the total but didn’t manage beyond the early stages.

One should stick out above all: England.

In fact only six different times has a non-Big Four team made the Champions League groups (though the number of teams that qualify has gone from one to four):

Blackburn – 1
Leeds – 2
Newcastle – 3

If ever there was a statistic to accurately depict the dominance of the Big Four, this is it.

Other strange stats:

• In 1991-92, Sampdoria lost to Barcelona in the European Cup final at Wembley. Their name still has not graced this list, despite coming close a few times.
• The Romanian Liga I is dominated by teams from Bucharest – since 1981, only 3 clubs, each one time, from outside the city have won the title – and yet only one of the three Romanian clubs are from the capital. This isn’t supposed to be how dominance works (see: Premier League, English).
• Furthermore, Turkey shows Romania how one city’s dominance is done: Turkey with three clubs, Istanbul with three teams.
• Scotland are desperately looking for a third participant to mount an Old Firm challenge.
• Red Star Belgrade, one of the two dominant Serbian teams along with Belgrade pals Partizan, won the 1991 European Cup and yet haven’t managed a group stage entrance.

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Category: Champions League, World Football