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Spanish clubs the ones to catch in Europe

Asked which teams he wanted Manchester United to be grouped with in the Champions League draw after Wednesday’s 4-0 victory in Belgium, Ander Herrera told us: “I don’t want to play against the Spanish teams. Why? Because they’re very good. Look how well they do year after year.”

When Herrera arrived at United in 2014 the main aim of his team was a top four finish to get the club back into the Champions League. A seventh place finish in 2013-14 had led to them missing out on European football for the first time since English clubs were re-introduced back into European competition in 1990.

“Winning here (in Bruges) was the completion of that work,” explained the Basque, who scored and played well during his first start of the season. “Now we start with the challenges of the group stage.”

Herrera’s wish was granted as not one of Spain’s record five teams was grouped with United.

European champions and favourites for this season’s competition Barcelona were grouped with Bayer Leverkusen, AS Roma and BATE.

The 2014 champions and record ten times winners Real Madrid are with PSG, Shakhtar Donetsk and Malmo.

Twice finalists Atletico Madrid will be favourites to qualify from Benfica, Galatasaray and Astana, the first Kazakhstani team to reach the Champions League.

Europa League winners Sevilla are in a tough group with Manchester City, Juventus and Borussia Monchengladbach. That will be interesting for Fernando Llorente, Herrera’s former Athletic Bilbao teammate, who left Juventus for Sevilla a few hours before both teams were paired together. Sevilla will be hoping that he’s as effective as Carlos Bacca, the big Colombian striker they recently sold to AC Milan for €30 million – a €21 million profit two years after they signed him from Club Brugge. Along with FC Porto, Sevilla are the most decisive and successful club in Europe for signing players and selling them at a profit. In the last decade they’ve sold Daniel Alves, Seydou Keita, Aleix Vidal and Ivan Rakitic to Barcelona alone.

Valencia, the fifth Spanish team in Thursday’s draw, were grouped with Zenit, Lyon and debutants Gent. They are another Iberian side with a tradition of recruiting well and selling stars for a profit. Had they kept Juan Mata, David Silva, David Villa, Nicholas Otamendi, Jordi Alba, Roberto Soldado and Juan Bernat, now of Bayern Munich, then they’d be close to the team which reached consecutive Champions League finals in 2000 and 2001 – losing the latter to Bayern on penalties.

Spanish teams are consistently over achieving in Europe.

They’ve won more European trophies (Champions League/UEFA Cup/Europa League) than English, Italian, Dutch and German clubs combined so far this century. They’ve won six of the last seven European Super Cups too. And all that against clubs from richer leagues like the Premier League, better-supported leagues like the Bundesliga or traditionally more successful leagues like Serie A.

Spain may have melted into a deeper economic crisis than any major western European nation, but its football clubs continue to excel.

It’s not just the two giants of Barcelona (four European Cups in the last decade) and Real Madrid (3 European Cups since 2000 to put them on an untouchable 10 wins); Atletico reached the 2014 European Cup final – in addition to winning two Europa League finals.

“We took the competition seriously,” says Diego Forlan, who scored both goals in the 2010 final. “It’s much better to win a European trophy than finish two places higher up the league to get more television money.” That dig was at those English clubs who fielded weaker teams in the Europa League.

Sevilla have won more UEFA/Europa titles than anyone else; Alaves, Espanyol, Real Mallorca, Athletic Bilbao have all reached a European final in the last 20 years while former Tottenham man Nayim did serious damage from the halfway line to Arsenal’s hopes of lifting the 1995 European Cup Winners’ Cup for Real Zaragoza.

In 2000, three of the four Champions League semi-finalists were Spanish, while Deportivo La Coruna reached the 2003-04 Champions League semi-finals, an achievement matched by Villarreal two years later. Celta Vigo won the Intertoto Cup and Malaga were unlucky to be knocked out of the 2013 quarter finals in the last minute in Dortmund.

It’s little wonder that Herrera wanted to avoid the Spanish teams. David Moyes, the man who tried to take Herrera to Manchester, thinks that the brightest spot of his difficult 10-month spell at Old Trafford was reaching the Champions League quarter-finals. That wasn’t considered a success by United fans, who’d seen their team reach three European Cup finals in four years between 2008-2011, but Moyes’ assertion is that not a single English team managed to get to the quarter-finals last season – and that from a league which bills itself as the best in the world.

Spain’s La Liga isn’t perfect. It has problems with games being rescheduled to unpopular times, with unequal distribution of television revenues, empty seats at stadiums and debt. Barça’s signing of youth players was unedifying and they’re rightly banned from playing stars signed in 2015 as a punishment for that. At least they’re usually strong in the transfer market.

“Apart from two teams [Madrid and Barça], the rest are not in a position to offer long contracts. 90 per cent of Spanish clubs cannot afford transfers,” Arsenal’s first team coach Francis Cagigao said last year.

Valencia and Atletico Madrid will dispute that, but his point that “many Spanish players want a chance in the Premier League” is true because “the stadiums are full, there’s a fantastic environment, there’s a great respect for players and coaches. There’s more patience from the fans and the economy is better.”

Spain feels threatened by the continuing global success of the Premier League, which is set to conclude an even bigger television deal from foreign markets. Critics feel the Premier League is over-hyped and self-satisfied, its stars overpaid and note that not a single Premier League player has won the Ballon d’Or since Cristiano Ronaldo in 2008.

There’s an underlying global sentiment that English football has a supercilious air, which isn’t helped by Sky Sports’ patronizing bleats about the Premier League being the best.

In 2013, new United leading executive Ed Woodward told me: “I don’t like the fact that in the list of 25 players in the Ballon d’Or, we’ll only have Robin and Wayne. I don’t like the fact that there are consistently more players from Spain on that list.”

He said it after the world’s best XI of 2012 was comprised entirely of players from Barcelona and Madrid. Not a single player who makes his living in the footballing powerhouses of Manchester, Munich or Milan made the eleven. Not one who plays in Turin, Dortmund or Paris either.

Woodward planned to do something about it, with Radamel Falcao and Angel di Maria at Old Trafford for an unsuccessful season last term. And all the while, Spanish clubs continue to excel over the rest. And that’s why they’ll be the clubs to avoid again this season.

Herrera? Like his United team mates, he’ll be content being grouped with PSV Eindhoven, CSKA Moscow and Wolfsburg, while Chelsea and Arsenal will also be glad to have avoided Spanish sides.

Pity Man City, then, who are in the toughest group with Sevilla.