The football season is behind us, well, the club football season that is, and what a season it was. If we’re to describe the season with a single phrase, it would be ‘English dominance’. English clubs were indeed ruling over Europe this season – we had an English teams winning the Champions League and the League Europa. In the Premier League, Liverpool and City were fighting neck and neck up until the last round of the season. There has never been a runner-up that managed to collect 97 points, but the Klopp’s team had to be satisfied with the Champions League trophy.
In any other year this sentence would make very little sense but considering that they managed one single Premier League defeat the whole season. And as the season was successful for English football in general, and particularly for Liverpool and City and to a lesser degree Tottenham and Chelsea, for Real Madrid it was close to a disaster, with Barcelona having very few reasons to be happy. In fact, the Catalans can only look at the Primera trophy as a positive in the 2018-19 and while that is no small achievement, the club led by Messi were really looking forward to win the Champions League trophy but they were stopped by an incredibly motivated Liverpool team.
There’s not a lot of betting action during the summer as well, except for friendly matches, but that’s not really interesting. As a result, many punters are turning to online casino gaming as an alternative that’s available all year round.
So, what can we expect in 2019-20? One thing is certain, English clubs will definitely remain a dominant force in Europe, considering that neither City, nor Liverpool show any signs of fatigue or intend on slowing down. It is probably reasonable to assume that these two teams will be competing for the Premier League title next year as well.
At the same time, both Real Madrid and Barcelona are looking to regroup and re-establish themselves. It appears that Madrid are still struggling to find a replacement for Ronaldo and it’s not just Ronaldo, their defence is looking shakier than ever. Maybe it sounds like a bold statement since Real Madrid and Barcelona were the true powerhouse teams in the past decade and there were fewer finals with one of these teams being absent than finals featuring either of them. Real Madrid won four of the five finals in the past five years, not considering this year.
So it may seem an overstatement to claim that the age of Real Madrid and Barcelona is over, especially, since Real Madrid were current Champions only several days ago, and Liverpool lost 3-0 to Barcelona at Camp Nou and could’ve easily been eliminated from the competition, but the results and the tendencies are in favour of English clubs.