When Liverpool won the European Cup in Istanbul three years ago, Spain was filled with pride as Rafa Benítez and Xabi Alonso played key roles in a remarkable victory. Now, however, the Premier League's domination of the Champions League brings only trepidation and concern.
By 2006 Spanish commentators wanted to know why exactly it was that the English - so often seen as the noble troglodytes of the European game - had suddenly come good. The past two seasons, when three of the Champions League semi-finalists were English, raised the alarm further. Italians clung to Milan's European record - reaching finals in 2003, 2005 and 2007 and winning the first and last of them - but no other Serie A team has come close to such success and there is no hiding the decline when recent results are compared to those from the 1990s.
Voices maintaining that Spain are the best have dwindled too. Some agreed with the Spanish commentator who, while watching Bolton against Atlético Madrid, snapped: "I would like to see this lot in Spain: they'd be right down the bottom, struggling." More agreed with the quick-fire response of his co-commentator, who said: "Yeah, obviously. They are right down the bottom and struggling in England. The Premiership is stronger than La Liga."
Last year, the Spanish warned that the Fifa ranking of English clubs was dangerously close to theirs. This year, as they grew closer still, the Spanish sports daily AS could barely disguise its panic. "Soon they will be a long way ahead of us," ran one editorial, "and we will be lucky even to hang on to second place as we slip well behind. This is a wake-up call!"
The English hegemony is reflected in TV figures. The Premier League has long been the most watched league across the globe, but now it is the most watched even in countries proud of their own leagues, England's traditional betters. State television in Spain shows the Premier League while commercial channels offer the FA Cup. There were once England games too, until audiences found that it just wasn't the same as watching Wayne Rooney, Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard play for their clubs. Liverpool v Arsenal was the second-most-watched club game in Spain last season, after Real Madrid v Barcelona.
English football offers what other countries seem to lack: great players, good football and enormous helpings of glamour. A journalist on the Italy's Gazzetta Dello Sport said: "That glamour is simply lacking from Italy right now." That, he said, was why Ronaldinho was greeted with such a huge fanfare in Milan recently. "Who was the last truly big name to go to Italy? Adriano, perhaps? Juventus are getting excited over Christian Poulsen. He's a good player, sure, but Poulsen?"
England also boasts what the AS correspondent Alfredo Relano calls "honesty, commitment and endeavour" and the frenetic pace that sets its game apart. There is also the passion and atmosphere in the grounds that to some eyes - as the former Real Madrid sporting director Jorge Valdano famously put it - makes "shit on a stick" become "a work of art" when hung in the centre circle at Anfield.
However, England's football is no longer a rough and tumble, fun-filled game which is ultimately doomed to failure and the Spanish want to know why. For the former Chelsea and Barcelona defender Albert Ferrer, stability is the key: while Spanish clubs wield the managerial axe, English clubs do not. "Arsène Wenger hasn't won anything for three years and what happened to him?" Ferrer said. "Nothing. And that is the point."
The former Real Madrid defender Fernando Hierro highlights the level of organisation in England, which leaves the Spanish trailing, and the former Valencia midfielder Gaizka Mendieta recalls how when he first arrived in England he was shocked to see players eating baked beans and drinking beer on the bus home. With the arrival of foreign managers and foreign players, that has changed. And there's the rub.
English football has improved because of the foreigners, say the foreigners. Privately, one Spanish coach admits that many of his colleagues are keen to go to England for two reasons: they get paid extremely well and think that success comes relatively easily. "The level of English coaching is so basic," he says, "that Spaniards believe with the slightest improvement it is easy to make an impact." Only when the raw material is good.
In Spain and Italy, only Internazionale are spending the kind of money that can compete with England's big four. England does not produce great players, it buys them.
"The perception in Italy," says one commentator, "is that the Premier League has all the cash. Those aren't English clubs, they are multi-national ones. The best players and the best coaches are not English."
English football offers what many other countries lack: great players, good football and big helpings of glamour
