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Why Defending the Champions League Title Is So Rare: A Look at the Past 20 Seasons

 INTRODUCTION

We all know that the UEFA Champions League is the greatest club competition of all time, and it is the hardest to win as well. We hv the Champions league final coming up in a few days: PSG VS INTER.

These are relatively new teams(of course Inter is playing 2nd final in 3 years but still). 

But I had a question hwo often does it happen that the winner retains the title and does that club perform on a similar level.

Well we all know that Real Madrid have won three titles in a row in the seasons 2015-16, 2016-17 and 2017-18.

We are going to look at the last 20 Champions league winners and see how teams fared next season.






In the last 20 Champions League campaigns, Real Madrid have been the most successful club winning it on 6 occasions and the ONLY team to defend the title in the last 20 UCL campaigns when they did a 3 peat as mentioned earlier. In fact they are the ONLY club in the Champions League era(when it was renamed to Champions league from European Cup) to ever defend the title.


Real Madrid's arch rivals, FC Barcelona ahave been the second most successful team in this time period winning the Champions League on four occasions, but they could not defend it.


Liverpool, Chelsea and Bayern Munich have all won on 3 separate occasion but, like Barca could never defend it.

So my question is, Why could no team(other than Madrid of course) not defend their title.




FC BARECLONA

Lets take each team one by one. First up Fc Barcelona. Out of the 4 that they have won they were extremely dominant on two occasions when they won the treble and Sextuple.

Just after the season Barcelona won the treble, they were still flying high, they had probably the greatest front three in footballing History-MSN.

They faced Atletico Madrid in the ucl semi final, they won the first leg 2-1, everyone expected Barcelona to win as they were so strong, but in the second leg Diego Simeone's men put up a masterclass and won the match 2-0 and the tie 3-2. If Barca won the UCL that season they could have won back to back trebles.


In 2009-10 just after their legendary 08-09 season, came close but lost in the semi final again, this time to a very strong Inter side led by the Jose Mourinho, Inter themselves completed the treble that season.

In the 2006/07 they narrowly lost to Liverpool on away goals. 

And they could not defend their 2010-11 victory because they lost the semi-final next year to Chelsea who actually went on to win it that year.


LIVERPOOL FC


In 2004-05 Liverpool fans witnessed probably the greatest nights in their club history, famously known as the miracle of Istanbul. But in the season that followed liverpool had quite a slow start and they coyuld not push for their 5th title and were eliminated by Benfica in Round of 16
However they eventually won their 5th under Jurgen Klopp in 2018-19 season. The following season they were ousted by Atletico Madrid in round of 16 again



INTER, AC MILAN AND MANCHESTER UNITED


Sir Alex Ferguson led Man Utd to champions league glory with an incredibly talented squad in 2007-08 however they lost the final next year to a very good Barcelona side.

On the other hand AC Milan were knocked out by Arsenal in the round of 16 in the season where they were the defending champions.It was particularly not a great season for AC Milan, they even finished 5th in Serie A and failed to qualify for next season's champions league.

If we talk about Inter Milan, Jose Mourinho left the club after winning the historic treble and since then they have not been able to do much, however they did reach the champions League final a year back where they lost to Manchester City.



FC BAYERN MUNICH AND CHELSEA


Bayern Munich came close the season after they won the Sextuple, they lost to PSG on away goals.

In 2013-14 also they reached the semi final but lost to Real Madrid who went on to win their 10th Champions league title.

Chelsea won the Champions league in 2020-21 when Tuchel joined mid season, next season however they lost to Real Madrid in quarter final who again won in that season.

In 2011-12, when they won the Champions League they finished outside of the top 4 in Premier League which meant there was not Champions League football next season.



MANCHESTER CITY


Pep Guardiola led Manchester City to a historic treble in 2022-23 season, but in next season's UCL campaign,even though they signed quite a few players like Nunes, Kovacic and Gvardiol ,it was Real Madrid again who beat them and it was Real Madrid who won the UCL that season.





So yeah that was it.

In my opinion, when it comes to Champions League, experience and grit is very important and so is the consistency. Which is why so may teams cannot defend their title, I mean its not easy when you are expected to do well in all three competition for two continuous seasons. Its worth noticing that how many times the defending champions have lost to Real Madrid😅.

It will be very interesting to see how this year's finalists do next year because PSG seem to have a settled squad and a great manger, I don't see any major outgoings and on the other Inzaghi has led Inter to their 2nd final in 3 years.






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