With the Premier League and Ligue 1 wrapping up proceedings this past week, we’re just one weekend shy of the 2023/24 season’s final curtain.
In the second-to-last weekend of European football action of the season:
– Man City won the Premier League.
– Fenerbache stopped Galatasaray from winning the Turkish Super Lig.
– Atalanta won the Europa League.
And, after all of that fun, here’s the 10 best football teams in Europe right now.
If you’ve been reading the Power Rankings in recent weeks, you’ll know just how enamoured we had been with Galatasaray’s frankly astonishing Super Lig form.
After 17 wins in a row and accumulating 99 points however, their run finally came to an end at the hands of their arch rivals Fenerbahce.
Fener’s win – secured by a 71st minute goal from Caglar Soyuncu – as well as ending Galatasaray’s hot streak, also meant that they go into the final day of the season with a slither of hope of winning the Super Lig title.
Brest will play UEFA Champions League football next season.
That is a sentence that no Ligue 1 aficionado would have ever thought they’d read.
The club who finished 14th in 2022/23 managed to secure third spot and a place in Europe’s elite competition thanks to a combination of their 3-0 win over Toulouse and LOSC Lille’s 2-2 draw with OGC Nice on the final day of the season.
There was a brief moment at the start of the week when Chelsea fans looked at their form at the end of the 2023/24 season (five wins on the bounce), looked at the average of their squad, and thought: ‘things are looking up’.
Then the Blues decided to part ways with manager Mauricio Pochettino, and now they’re back to square one again. Nice one Todd Boehly.
It happened.
In their 52nd game of the season, it finally happened.
Bayer Leverkusen’s hopes of completing a remarkable unbeaten treble-winning season were dashed in the Europa League final at the Aviva Stadium, with Atalanta trouncing Xabi Alonso’s side 3-0 thanks to an Ademola Lookman hat-trick.
The defeat shouldn’t put too much of a dampener on the season for Leverkusen fans though.
When Eberechi Eze and Michael Olise are fit and firing, Crystal Palace are genuinely one of the best teams in the Premier League.
If you didn’t watch their 5-0 thumping of Aston Villa on the final day of the season, that sounds hyperbolic.
If you did, it makes perfect sense.
Bologna unfortunately won’t be going into their first UEFA Champions League campaign in a lifetime with Thiago Motta at the helm, with the manager set to join Juventus.
However, the fact that they’ve qualified for the UEFA Champions League at all is beyond remarkable.
An incredible achievement.
It didn’t quite happen for Arsenal in the end up thanks to Manchester City’s win over West Ham United on the final day, but unlike last season at least the ‘bottlejob’ tag won’t be thrown around.
The Gunners did everything they possibly could win the title, it simply wasn’t enough.
Having secured the La Liga title a few weeks ago, Real Madrid have absolutely nothing to play for at the moment in Spain and it shows.
Carlo Ancelotti’s defence actually didn’t even bother showing up for their most recent game, conceding four away to Villarreal as a result.
You can guarantee they will for the Champions League, though.
For the first time in their history, the tiny town of Bergamo has possession of a European trophy.
Atalanta, against all odds, managed to end Leverkusen’s unbeaten run in emphatic fashion in the Europa League final, relying on a wonderful gameplan from Gian Piero Gasperini and an all-time great final performance from Lookman to do so.
For a record breaking fourth consecutive time, Manchester City are Premier League champions.
The Cityzens needed to win their remaining eight games of the season in order to do it, and inevitably, they did exactly that.
They now head into the FA Cup final on Saturday as heavy favourites to win a domestic double.
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