The mighty have fallen...
And, is Valverde the most underrated player in world football?
The Premier League’s best attribute is its marketing.
Self-proclaimed as the best league in the world, and it’s a trap that all the British pundits fall into.
And yes, in a lot of facets, the Premier League is the best league in the world.
It is certainly the most physically demanding and the most intense. But technically, the quality is often lacking, with teams preferring athletes over silky footballers.
There’s also the spending power. The Premier League’s clubs are richer than their counterparts abroad, who must find other ways and means to try and compete.
In the league phase of this season’s Champions League, five of the top eight places, which secured automatic qualification for the last 16, were taken up by English teams, including one, in Tottenham, who are in a Premier League relegation scrap.
For the second year in a row, a Premier League side topped the 36-team standings, with Arsenal following in Liverpool’s footsteps. The only English side to miss out on an automatic spot in the last 16 were Newcastle United, and they made extremely light work of Qarabag over a two-legged play-off.
Yet when it has started to really matter, those other teams from other leagues have shown they have plenty of bite to go with their bark.
Opta director David Wall posted the below on X in the wake of Wednesday’s Champions League fixtures.
Of the six English teams in action, none of them won. Arsenal managed a draw thanks to a soft penalty against Bayer Leverkusen, while Newcastle were the only one of the Premier League’s sides to argue they were hard done by, as they led Barcelona 1-0 at St James’ Park until a last-gasp Lamine Yamal penalty.
Spurs’ spiral continued with a 5-2 defeat to Atletico Madrid — one in which they were 4-0 down inside 22 minutes, with Igor Tudor having taken their goalkeeper off after just over a quarter of an hour.
Fair enough, Spurs are a laughing stock, not just at home, but abroad too.
But, Liverpool, Chelsea and Manchester City fared no better.
Chelsea were beaten 5-2 by reigning European champions Paris Saint-Germain, while Man City were hammered 3-0 by a Federico Valverde-inspired Real Madrid. Vinicius Junior missed a chance to make it 4-0 when he saw a penalty saved.
Liverpool, at least, are only 1-0 down against Galatasaray, and Arne Slot’s team should fancy their chances of turning the tie in their favour at Anfield.
But perhaps this was the wake-up call that had been coming. As the Premier League has become more and more attritional, more and more about set-pieces and some truly gruelling tactics and physical battles, some of the technical quality has been lost, and in the biggest moments, the best teams from the continent still have that in abundance.
What a ridiculous footballer Federico Valverde is.
At 27, he has won it all. He has been a key cog in an all-conquering Real Madrid side.
Yet he has never truly got the credit he deserves.
