Tottenham's delightful rise bucks the trend of success for big wage payers

How we got here, part one. On Saturday night, Liverpool and Tottenham will play in the seventh Champions League final between teams from the same country. It is the second all-English final. Manchester United played Chelsea in 2008.

There have been three all-Spanish finals. Real Madrid played Atletico Madrid in 2016 and 2014 and Valencia in 2000. There has been one all-German final (Bayern Munich v Dortmund in 2013) and one all-Italian final (Milan v Juventus in 2003).

With more than one entrant from several countries sometimes two entrants from the same country will reach the final. Why so far have those countries been Spain, England, Germany and Italy?

The annual Uefa Club Licensing Benchmark Report gives the average wage bill for top division clubs in each of Uefa’s 55 member countries. There is a strong correlation between how much players in a country are paid and how well teams from that country do in Uefa competitions.

The more a club can afford to pay the more likely they are to sign good players.

Including only clubs in the Champions League, the order for average payrolls in recent seasons has been England, Spain, Italy, Germany. This is slightly misleading. Two Spanish qualifiers have paid a lot more than the others.

Uefa list many club payrolls individually (whether those clubs were in the Champions League, Europa League or neither). The top two are usually Real Madrid and Barcelona. Making up the top ten are five of England’s big six – Manchester United, Liverpool, Manchester City, Chelsea and Arsenal – and mingled among them Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain and Juventus.

So those are the clubs that should have dominated European football.

The delightful surprise from England has been Tottenham.

Tottenham’s payroll in 2017-18, the last season for which accounts have been published, was £148 million. To put that into context: Manchester City’s was £260m and Liverpool’s £264m. Everton’s was £145m, for goodness’ sake.

Tottenham have overachieved. They have better players than they are paying for. Arguably English clubs generally got poor value for money in some recent seasons. They paid more than non-English clubs for a player of the same standard. But this season there were two English clubs in the Europa League final. And now two will compete in Madrid in the final of the Champions League.

You don't always get what you deserve

How we got here, part two. The best players want to go to the clubs who can pay the highest wages, where they combine into the best teams. But even top teams sometimes need a favourable roll of the ball or blast on a referee’s whistle. Especially in a knockout competition.

“In one game anything can happen,” said Pep Guardiola, manager of Manchester City, before the FA Cup final against Watford. I have been saying this for more than 20 years so it was nice to hear the words spoken by such a highly respected figure.

They are also true of two games, or any small number.

Think back to the Champions League semi-finals. In each the aggregate score was a pretty close approximation of the play. But how did the scores come about?

Start with Barcelona v Liverpool. The first leg was an even match that Barcelona won 3-0. The second leg was an even match that Liverpool won 4-0.

After the first leg Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp had said: “Against a side like this, playing this kind of football, I was completely happy. In the end, nobody is really interested – probably only football nerds will think about it – because it was about the result, and we lost 3-0.” I readily confess to being a football nerd.

Ajax were slightly the better team in their semi-final first leg at Tottenham. They won 1-0. By half-time in the second leg they had added two more goals, but in those 45 minutes they were not two goals better. Then in the second half Tottenham scored three goals, but in those 45 minutes Tottenham were not three goals better. With the aggregate score at 3-3, Tottenham went through on away goals.

The Europa League final on Wednesday was a fairly even match in which Chelsea beat Arsenal 4-1.

Over a large number of games results can reflect ability, though they will never reflect it perfectly. In one game, or two games, anything can happen. “Normally the better team win,” Guardiola added. But sometimes they do not, and sometimes there is not a meaningfully better team but still one team win.

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