Football News: Is the English Premier League overhyped?

Definitely, but is that why English teams struggle in Europe? Such as Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal? Not entirely.

There is many reasons for the lack of success in Europe by British sides.
The first is that the technical level of the players playing in England is overhyped. Maybe they aren't quite the "world class" players the media would have you believe.
But then you look at players like Hazard, Sanchez, Mata and the technical ability of these guys and you have to say there are plenty of very technically gifted players plying their trade in England.

It's not the top sides that lack the technically gifted players but the rest of the league. Most of the top players at the mid level clubs have stronger physical attributes over technical ability.
It is the infatuation with pace and power in our league which shuns technical ability. We would rather see someone burst past a player with pace and power rather than beat a man with touch, control and intellect.
This is at odds with many of Europe's top leagues. Meaning that the top teams in these leagues have far more practice against technically gifted players.

This leads on to the next issue. The league in England is very intense. It is pace and power for 90 minutes with clubs having to play a massive number of games. When you get to the UCL semi-finals most of the English teams if they are there have on average played 8-10 games more than the teams from other leagues. Also due to the intensity of those games players are getting both physically and mentally tired by that point.

That doesn't excuse poor performances in the group stages, but it does effect the mentality of opposition players. With the lack of success in Europe, teams don't fear the English teams in the same way as they do Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich. a lot of the times these teams have beaten their opponent before they enter the field with their reputation. Manchester United did much the same in England when Sir Alex was in charge, teams would turn up against us already beaten due to the aura that surrounded our club at the time.

The final point is that the Premier league is a tactically naive league. Only in recent years have we seen a few teams on a regular basis move away from 442 and adopt different ideas. This lack of tactical variation in our league makes it more difficult to adapt to these differing tactical approaches in Europe.

All these things together make things difficult for our sides.

There is no one thing that is to blame, which will make it very hard to change without wholesale changes being made to how we approach the game in England. We need to put progress and development ahead of results. let's improve the technical ability and understanding of the game from grass root up. Until this is done our European chances will be slim just as our international chances are.

Written by James "Shappy" Shapland September 30 2015 11:30:21