Which is the best football club in Europe?

Girlfriend Is Better

“We’re by far the greatest team the world has ever seen” is the chant from football fans everywhere. While applauding their great support, it should be quietly pointed out that this obviously cannot be true for every single club.

Today we’re going to tackle a slightly easier question by discussing which is the best football club in Europe, though even this is by no means a “no brainer”.

UEFA Coefficients – by club

Some might legitimately say that this exercise has already been done by UEFA, who publish their rankings each year, in particular their 10-year coefficients. These are based on the results of clubs competing in the Champions League, Europa League and Europa Conference League.

This is far from an academic exercise, as these rankings determine the seeding of each club in relevant UEFA competition draws.

On this basis, after the 2022/23 season, the club ranked highest in Europe was Real Madrid, followed by Bayern Munich, Barcelona, Manchester City, Juventus and Chelsea.

Approach

However, I thought it might be interesting to look at this question in a number of different ways.

• First, as this is a financial blog, we could see which club has earned most in UEFA competitions over the last 10 years. After all, there is no clearer recognition of what UEFA really thinks of a club’s performance than how much it awards in TV money.

• Second, we could assess a club’s performance based on how far it progresses in UEFA competitions. As Bruce Forsyth used to say, “Points win prizes”.

• Finally, we should recognise that some UEFA competitions are worth more than others, so winning the Champions League should bring more kudos than the Europa league, which in turn is worth more than the Europa Conference League.

Ground Rules

We have included all revenue earned from the Group Stage onwards in each UEFA competition, so excluded the relatively small amounts from the qualifying rounds. The only exception is that we have also added revenue for clubs eliminated in the Champions League play-offs, as this is a fairly significant amount.

All years have been sourced from UEFA’s financial reports, except 2022/23 which has been modeled. In the latter case, prize money and UEFA coefficient payments are certain, while the TV pool should be reasonably accurate, as it is based on the prior year sums for each country.

Europe TV Revenue – top 20 clubs

Real Madrid have earned the most TV money from UEFA competitions in the last 10 years with a colossal €887m, though four other clubs have also received more than €800m in this period: Manchester City €826m, PSG €817m, Juventus €810m and Bayern Munich €802m.

There are actually three Spanish clubs in the top seven, as Barcelona are in 6th place (€721m) and Atletico Madrid are 7th (€675m), while two English clubs are not far behind, namely Chelsea €647m and Liverpool €631m.

Looking at the top 20 clubs, England have the most representatives with all of the so-called Big Six featuring, followed by Spain and Italy with four clubs apiece. Germany and Portugal both have two clubs, while France and Netherlands each have just one club.