A Uefa-thin lead for La Liga

The Big Four, carving up the pie: Most successful Champions league nations, based on our points system for 1992-93 to 2011-12.

We’re slap bang in the middle of the most exciting time in the football calendar: the Champions League Round of 16. The ides of Feb’ sees the European elite (and Celtic) square off in the first, meaningful heavyweight clashes of the world’s most prestigious tournament in all of sportsdom.

Like the English Premier League, Uefa’s modern incarnation of its top competition was born in 1992, partly in order to stave off a European super league threatened by the biggest clubs. The last twenty years has seen a consolidation of success amongst the ‘major’ leagues of Spain, England, Germany and Italy.

One only needs to look at the last European Cup winners, Red Star Belgrade, to see that times have changed dramatically since the tournament adopted a group stage and, most importantly, beckoned in unparalleled riches for the competing clubs able to build on the advantage of their large domestic TV rights deals.

But which clubs have been the most successful in the modern era? And how dominant have the big four countries been?

If you award 1 point for group stage participation, 1.5 points for competing in the now defunct second group stage, 2 points for round of 16 elimination, 3 points for exiting at the QF stage, 4 for SF, 5 for runners-up and 6 for being crowned champions, the following 20 team league table from 1992-93 to 2011-12 can be drawn up:

Rank	Club	Country	Total points
1	Barcelona	Spain	56
1	Manchester United	England	56
3	Real Madrid	Spain	55
4	AC Milan	Italy	52.5
5	Bayern Munich	Germany	51
6	Juventus	Italy	38.5
7	Chelsea	England	38
8	Porto	Portugal	34.5
9	Woolwich	England	34
10	Internazionale	Italy	31
11	Lyon	France	26.5
12	Ajax	Netherlands	26
13	Liverpool	England	25
14	Valencia	Spain	21
15	Dynamo Kyiv	Ukraine	19.5
16	PSV Eindhoven	Netherlands	19
17	Olympiacos	Greece	18
18	Borussia Dortmund	Germany	17.5
19	Marseille*	France	16.5
20	Monaco	France	16

*Marseille’s 1992-93 title was tainted by their match-fixing scandal under Bernard Tapie, yet still stands in the record books.

Crunching the numbers for all national representatives provides the following results:

Rank	Country	No. of clubs	Total points
1	Spain	13	169.5
2	England	9	165.5
3	Italy	9	152
4	Germany	10	114.5
5	France	10	92.5
6	Portugal	5	59
7	Netherlands	7	53.5
8	Greece	3	37.5
9	Russia	5	33
10	Ukraine	2	28.5
11	Turkey	5	27.5
12	Scotland	2	19
13	Belgium	5	17.5
14	Norway	2	14.5
15	Czech Republic	3	11
15	Romania	4	11
17	Switzerland	4	9.5
18	Sweden	3	8
19	Croatia	2	7
19	Denmark	4	7
21	Austria	3	6.5
22	Cyprus	2	5
23	Israel	3	4
23	Poland	2	4
25	Belarus	1	3
25	Slovakia	3	3
27	Hungary	2	2
27	Serbia	1	2
29	Bulgaria	1	1
29	Finland	1	1
29	Slovenia	1	1

With four teams left in the last 16 to England’s two, Spain is set to stretch its lead at the top of the rankings this season.

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