Sports
Why missing Champions League can boost Premier League teams: What data shows
Everyone mocked him at the time, but Arsene Wenger had a point.
In 2012, after Arsenal lost to Sunderland in the FA Cup and while they were down 4-0 against AC Milan before the second leg of their round of 16 tie in the Champions League, Wenger solidified the focus for the rest of his team’s season. He said: “The first trophy is to finish in the top four.”
While this lack of ambition seemed to some like it was a cause of Arsenal’s then-seven-year trophy drought, that wasn’t quite true. The construction costs of Arsenal’s new stadium had hamstrung their ability to spend as much as Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea — Wenger was merely citing the economic reality in which he was living.
To have a shot at competing with those teams in the future, the Gunners needed to secure the extra millions of dollars in revenue generated from qualifying for the UEFA Champions League by finishing in the top four of the Premier League.
While you don’t get any silverware for finishing in the top four, finishing there was much more likely to lead to a Premier League or a Champions League title than winning the FA Cup or the League Cup. And if a top-four finish is more important than two of the competitions they hand out trophies for, well it kind of is its own trophy.
It’s not like we don’t treat it as such, either — the top-four race is one of the three ways we give texture to each season along with the title race and the relegation battle. (I don’t think it was done on purpose, but I applaud our collective hive mind for not settling on “race” to describe a competition between teams that are trying to avoid, rather than achieve, something.)
Even with the added guarantee of a fifth Champions League spot for the Premier League, this season hasn’t been any different. From here on, Manchester United, Aston Villa, Liverpool and Chelsea will mainly be judged by whether or not they secure one of the five spots. As Liverpool manager Arne Slot put it back in February: “If we don’t have Champions League football, it’s definitely not been an acceptable season. … That does have an enormous impact on the way this club is run.”
The impact on revenue is massive, but in the world of fixture bloat and player burnout, might there be a hidden benefit to missing out on the world’s most prestigious competition for a season? After all, Man United and Aston Villa, two of the teams in the current top four, aren’t playing in the Champions League this year.
Maybe missing out on the Champions League isn’t such a terrible thing for Premier League teams after all?
• Premier League without set-piece goals: What would the table look like?
• Tracker: Champions League qualification, Premier League relegation
• 2026 World Cup squads ranked: All 48 national teams
The economic impact of missing out on the Champions League
Let’s take Liverpool as an example.
After nearly winning the quadruple in the 2021-22 season, everything fell apart the following year. Jurgen Klopp’s team finished fifth — the first, and only time, in his eight full seasons at the club when they didn’t qualify for the Champions League.
The impact here is pretty straightforward. Per data from Kieron O’Connor’s excellent Swiss Ramble, here’s the club’s broadcast revenue from European competition in all of Klopp’s full seasons at the club:
• 2016-17: none
• 2017-18: €81 million
• 2018-19: €111 million
• 2019-20: €80 million
• 2020-21: €88 million
• 2021-22: €120 million
• 2022-23: €84 million
• 2023-24: €27 million
In 2016-17, Liverpool weren’t in Europe competition at all, and in 2023-24, they were in the Europa League. As Slot said in February: “When I arrived here and only signed Federico Chiesa, it was after a Europa League season.”
This is true, and less revenue means less money to spend on improving the team. But what’s interesting is that Slot is suggesting that the financial impact from missing out on the Champions League actually comes a year later. The transfer spending at the club suggests as much, too.
The €12 million deal for Chiesa was Liverpool’s only permanent move in the summer of 2024. But after the disappointing 2022-23 campaign, Liverpool spent €172 million combined (per Transfermarkt) on the acquisitions of Dominik Szoboszlai, Alexis Mac Allister, Ryan Gravenberch and Wataru Endo ahead of a season without Champions League matches.
Don’t forget: They also agreed to a nine-figure, Premier League-record deal with Brighton for Moisés Caicedo, who instead decided to join Chelsea — another club that failed to qualify for the Champions League after four consecutive top-four finishes.
Now, I’m not totally convinced that Liverpool only cut their spending in 2024 because of the lack of Champions League revenue from the preceding season. They also signed current backup goalkeeper Giorgi Mamardashvili from Valencia to a deal to be made permanent the following season. They had agreed to sign Martín Zubimendi from Real Sociedad too, only for him to make a last-second U-turn and stay in Spain for another season before joining Arsenal this past summer. Plus, they also had to sort out the contract situations for their three best and most expensive players: Mohamed Salah, Virgil van Dijk and Trent Alexander-Arnold.
Unlike in 2012, when clubs such as Arsenal were competing financially with the top four teams in all of Europe’s other major leagues and added European revenue might mean you would sign someone who otherwise would’ve went to AC Milan, the biggest Premier League clubs are now only really competing with Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain for talent. The rest of the Premier League is competing with the top-four teams in all of Europe’s major leagues now.
The combined commercial and broadcasting revenues generated by the topflight in England means that losing out on Champions League revenue, on average, isn’t as painful as it used to be. In 2022-23, Liverpool and Chelsea ranked seventh and ninth, respectively, in global revenue among all clubs. In 2023-24, with neither club in the Champions League, they ranked eighth and 10th.
The potential benefit of not being able to win the Champions League
In 2016-17, with Liverpool rebounding into the top four after an eighth-place finish and Chelsea winning the Premier League title after a 10th-place finish the previous season, a new theory seemed to emerge: Not having to play in the Champions League was actually beneficial for your Premier League performance.
To test this, a trained astrophysicist and Harvard professor wrote a blog post where he looked at the relationship between the season-to-season change in European matches played by a given team and the season-to-season change in Premier League points won.
“[For] each extra game a team plays in Europe, they can expect to lose half a point relative to the previous season,” he wrote. “So, if a team plays 12 more games, it will be 6 points worse off [on average] than the previous season.”
The author, funnily enough, was Laurie Shaw, who now holds the title of “chief scientist” at Liverpool. At the time Shaw wrote the piece, a number of other analyses had determined that there was no “hangover effect” for teams playing in Europe. In other words, teams that had just played a match in Europe didn’t perform worse than expected in their following Premier League match. Shaw’s work suggested that there’s a kind of cumulative effect from extra devoting resources — energy, strategy, travel, etc. — to European matches.
Last month, the blogger Markstats looked at the past three seasons and found there still to be no clear hangover effect in the Premier League. Since we can’t ask Shaw to just rerun his analysis for every season since 2016-17, I decided to do it — but only with Champions League matches.
This is how it looks when you plot all of the pairs of seasons when a team competed in the Champions League in at least one of them:
While it’s not a strong relationship, it’s close to the same relationship that Shaw observed in 2016. You can see it in the downward slope of the trendline.
Based on this data: For every extra Champions League game a team plays, they lose a little more than a third of a point on average. So, every three extra games in the Champions League are worth about one point in the Premier League table. And if we remove last season, when the total number of Champions League games increased for everyone, then the numbers match Shaw’s — a point lost for every two extra Champions League games played.
Now, there are lots of confounding factors here. When some teams miss the Champions League, they’ve usually been unlucky to an unsustainable degree. The same goes in the other direction: Sometimes teams qualify for the Champions League because of unsustainable hot streaks. How much of this is inevitable regression to the mean? And how much of this is a genuine decline in performance related to the extra intense games on your schedule?
But at the very least, there’s something here. It seems reasonable to expect the best teams to actually play more games in the Champions League, so the fact that on average teams perform better in the Premier League while playing fewer Champions League games suggests to me that there is a real negative effect of the added toll of extra high-level matches.
I also looked at the total number of games played from season to season across all competitions, and there’s basically no relationship to changes in points, so that suggests there’s something about the Champions League in particular that affects domestic performance.
Of course, it would be absurd to say that it’s better not to be in the Champions League. We don’t watch or care about sports because of the financial results they produce — the finances help produce the results and get produced by the results. The point of all of this is to try to win things like the Champions League and the Premier League. The way you do that is by, you know, actually participating in the Champions League.
But I do think we’ve potentially entered a stage of the Premier League’s growth where the teams are so rich, and the competition is so grueling, that there’s potential for a one-year exponential boost for a club that drops out of the competition. You’ll still have lots of money to spend on your roster because of the European revenue from the previous season, you’re probably going to have some better luck going forward, and you’ll get a full season without the potentially deleterious effects of all those midweek Champions League matches.
Whoever misses out on the top five this season would seem like a logical pick to bounce back into the Champions League places next year. So, Liverpool or Chelsea fans: There’s something that might be able to help you sleep at night.
Sports
NFL star George Kittle intercepts NBA player Tyrese Haliburton’s beer WrestleMania 42
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LAS VEGAS – One of the best WrestleMania 42 moments on Saturday night occurred outside of the ring.
NFL star George Kittle and NBA star Tyrese Haliburton were among the professional athletes in attendance for Night 1 of the event, which later featured Cody Rhodes retaining his Undisputed WWE Championship against Randy Orton in the main event.
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George Kittle and Tyrese Haliburton attend WrestleMania 42: Night 1 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada, on April 18, 2026. (Rich Freeda/WWE/Getty Images)
Kittle and Haliburton were showcased as two stars who were at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas for the event. Haliburton was about to drink his beer when Kittle intercepted it away and chugged it for him. The WWE crowd was frenzied after Kittle’s steal.
https://x.com/netflixsports/status/2045632212922728821
Both Kittle and Haliburton are major WWE fans and have been at multiple events, including getting involved in matches.
WWE STARS REVEAL WHAT MAKES WRESTLEMANIA SO SPECIAL: ‘IT’S THE SUPER BOWL OF PRO WRESTLING’

George Kittle attends WrestleMania 42: Night 1 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Nev., on April 18, 2026. (Rich Freeda/WWE)
Kittle clotheslined The Miz at WrestleMania 39. He previously revealed he’s a big fan of Penta, who is defending his Intercontinental Championship in a six-man ladder match on Sunday.
Haliburton previously went face-to-face with New York Knicks star Jalen Brunson on an episode of “Friday Night SmackDown.”
For now, it doesn’t appear as though either will enter a WWE ring anytime soon.
Kittle suffered a torn Achilles in January, ending his 2026 season with the San Francisco 49ers on a sour note.

George Kittle and Chuck Zito attend WrestleMania 42: Night 1 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas on April 18, 2026. (Rich Freeda/WWE/Getty Images)
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Haliburton is also recovering from a torn Achilies he suffered in Game 7 of the NBA Finals last year. He also opened up about battling shingles as he tries to return to the floor for the Indiana Pacers.
Sports
2026 NFL draft: Louis Riddick’s favorite prospects, sleepers
I absolutely love the NFL draft. I love the tape. I love the evaluations. I love the projections and anticipation. And we’re nearly there — the 2026 draft kicks off with Round 1 on April 23. You can catch me on the ESPN set for all three days of the action.
The tape isn’t the entire truth on prospects. The real analysis comes from spending time with them and getting a sense of who they are; that’s why team interviews and visits are so important. But the tape also doesn’t lie, and after spending hours and hours watching this class, I wanted to pick a few prospects who really caught my eye. There are my guys in the class — the players I’d be standing on the table to draft.
The first five are first-rounders who will be stars. I can’t get enough of them and would be ecstatic to land any of them. The second five are sleepers I really like. I’d be targeting them on Day 2 if I were running an NFL team, and I think they could all easily outperform their projected draft slots.
This is Year 4 of making this list, and it begins with a star running back expected to go in the top 10 and ends with a Day 2 safety who has a ton of upside.
Jump to:
First-rounders that I love
Sleepers who could be stars

Five surefire stars in Round 1
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Height: 6-0 | Weight: 212
Every NFL general manager and head coach is on a mission at this time of year to add offensive players who can win games on a single play. Love is that guy. He can break a huge play from anywhere on the field. He had 11 runs of 20 or more yards last season, and six of them went for touchdowns.
Love has the power, speed, open-field elusiveness and versatility to strike in the run game and pass game. His route running is as good as most NFL wide receivers. To that point, I thought he looked like a wideout stuck running routes with the running backs at the combine. He drops his weight and changes direction on a dime. Love hauled in 27 passes for 280 yards last season.
Don’t get caught up in the debate about whether running backs should be drafted in the top 10. This young man is not a running back. He is a game-changing playmaker who piled up 1,652 yards and 21 touchdowns from scrimmage last season. At the end of the day, that’s what every team wants.
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Height: 6-5 | Weight: 244
There’s no such thing as a can’t-miss prospect in a sport that is so dependent on surroundings and the ability to physically persevere. But … Styles is a can’t-miss prospect.
With his blend of unique physical traits — size, speed and fluid athleticism — and diamond-level character, I would sleep very well at night knowing that I had drafted a player who could be the face of the franchise. He finished last season with 77 tackles, a sack, a forced fumble and an interception. And then, he showed off his explosion at the combine, with a 43½-inch vertical jump. He does it all.
Styles is only scratching the surface of his potential as a multitool defender. He can do so many things to make the defense better — the most important of which might be his ability to lead and make those around him better. Styles is made for big roles in big moments, and he’s an incredibly safe prospect in that he’s already a pro. He’s a foundational player.
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Height: 6-4 | Weight: 320
At its core, football is about dominant, physical play along the lines of scrimmage. And there was nobody in college football last season who had more snaps of impose-your-will play along the offensive line than Ioane. He is an absolute tank at 320 pounds, and he has the versatility to line up anywhere on the line. Ioane plays with power, agility, speed and a level of nastiness when finishing blocks that is truly unique.
Any front office that believes in building from the inside out and staying strong down the middle — something I have talked about for the past decade — should see Ioane as a must-have foundational player.
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Olaivavega Ioane’s NFL draft profile
Check out some of the top highlights from Penn State’s Olaivavega Ioane.
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Height: 6-2 | Weight: 203
Tyson is the best wide receiver in the 2026 draft. Full stop.
He has it all … size, explosive quickness, body control, strength and solid top-end speed. He can move between the X, Z and slot receiver positions seamlessly and can put lots of pressure on an opposing defense by exploiting matchups anywhere on the field. Tyson had 75 catches, 1,101 yards and 10 touchdowns in 2024 before posting 61 catches, 711 yards and eight TDs in nine games in 2025.
The main thing holding back Tyson from being widely considered as a surefire superstar is his significant injury history. He suffered a torn ACL/MCL/PCL in 2022, had a broken collarbone in 2024 and dealt with hamstring issues in 2025. The conversations among team medical staff members regarding Tyson’s future availability projection will be fascinating. But I believe that the risk is worth the reward. This guy will be special.
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Height: 6-0 | Weight: 199
A very wise and accomplished wide receivers coach told me a long time ago that one of the most important differentiating characteristics that he looks for when evaluating wideouts — beyond consistently catching the ball — is how quickly and effectively they can transition after the catch. Do they get the ball upfield? Can they make defenders miss? Can they break tackles? And do they have the speed to turn a short pass into a long gain?
Cooper checks those boxes. He averaged 7.3 yards after the catch last season and showed no fear snagging the ball in traffic. He made the most difficult catch of the season in a got-to-have-it situation against Penn State. And Cooper, who had 937 yards and 13 touchdowns in 2025, can play in the slot or outside at the X or Z spot.
When he ripped off a 4.42 in the 40-yard dash at the combine, that sealed it for me. This guy will be a star at the NFL level.

Five sleepers outside Round 1
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Height: 5-11 | Weight: 193
Turn on any tape of the Hurricanes in 2025, and I guarantee you if Scott was on the field, he was making plays. He had 67 tackles, 13 tackles for loss, five sacks, two interceptions, two forced fumbles and four pass breakups last season.
He is the ultimate competitor and plays the game with a passion for contact. He possesses next-level football IQ and the speed/quickness to be a three-down factor at the nickel position, and that has become critical for the best NFL defenses. I saw times in the 4.32-4.35 range for his pro day 40-yard dash. That’s outstanding. We should hear his name called early on Day 2, in my opinion.
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Height: 6-0 | Weight: 220
I’ve talked about Louis a ton this spring, and not just because he played at Pitt.
Remember how impactful former Buccaneers linebacker Derrick Brooks was against the run and the pass during his great NFL career? I’m not saying Louis is Brooks, but the Hall of Famer’s style of play is exactly what I see when I watch Louis. He has the movement skills of a defensive back and the hands of a wide receiver. And I see the instincts, key-and-diagnose traits and overall toughness in the box against the run to be an elite-level playmaker in the pros the moment he steps onto the football field. He can get off blocks, defend the run and make tough tackles (77 of them last season, including 7.5 for loss).
“He just reminds me so much of Derrick Brooks.” @LRiddickESPN says @Pitt_FB‘s Kyle Louis has everything it takes to be a star in the NFL 📈 pic.twitter.com/y2g9EbcVRr
— ACC Network (@accnetwork) March 30, 2026
Day 1 starter with Pro Bowl upside. Louis is a true baller made for today’s game, and I love him as a quintessential Will linebacker for any defense.
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Height: 6-4 | Weight: 316
Georgia Tech coach Brent Key has said that Rutledge has the potential to be the best offensive lineman he has coached, which is saying something. Rutledge is a block of granite, playing with leverage and leg drive. He has the athleticism to play in zone or man run-game blocking schemes, and you can sense his competitiveness and desire to put defenders on their backs.
Rutledge will need to refine his pass pro technique, but he has a strong punch and excellent anchor. Some believe he could be an All-Pro center at the NFL level. I don’t care what position he ends up playing; I’d want him on my team.
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Height: 6-1 | Weight: 188
When a player finishes his college career with 15 interceptions, there is little doubt that he has the instincts to anticipate route combinations, get good breaks on the football and create turnovers. Clark is a big play waiting to happen, whether his alignment begins in the box as a nickel or dime LB, or in split-safety/single-high middle coverages in the back end, where he can really show off his 4.41 speed and range. Oh, and he will support the run and strike as a tackler, too. This all adds up to the kind of prospect that teams will covet next week.
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Height: 6-1 | Weight: 190
He might be flying under the radar for the average football-viewing fan, but NFL teams know Stukes’ upside. He has good size and exceptional functional explosiveness. Stukes ran a 4.33-second 40 and posted a 38-inch vertical jump at the combine.
Stukes can play nickel, dime, free safety or strong safety because he is smart, instinctive and an alpha competitor who loves to hit. Additionally, he is a good blitzer. He is equally skilled as a man or zone defender, and he has exceptional range and ball skills as a deep-field safety. Stukes has seven career picks, including four last season. There is nothing not to like about Stukes … nothing at all.
Sports
Michigan’s Richard repeats as NCAA men’s all-around champion
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Michigan’s Fred Richard won his second straight all-around individual crown Saturday night, and Cooper Kim and Jun Iwai each won individual titles to lead Stanford to its sixth NCAA men’s gymnastics championship since 2019.
Richard took home silver in the floor and parallel bars as he ran away with his third all-around individual national championship with a score of 83.598. Nebraska’s Max Odden (78.698) was second, 0.432 ahead of third-place Kristian Grahovski of Ohio State.
Stanford had 329.825 points, second-place Oklahoma finished with 328.495 and Michigan — the defending national champion — was third with 324.857. Asher Hong (14.300) took silver and Nick Kuebler (14.166) bronze on the rings in the final rotation to seal it for the Cardinal. Asher Cohen finished with a 14.500 to become the first Nebraska gymnast to win the rings since Jim Hartung in 1982.
Stanford claimed the program’s 11th national gymnastics championship; the Cardinal have won at least one NCAA team title for 50 straight seasons, since the men’s water polo team beat UCLA 13-12 for the national championship on Nov. 28, 1976. The next longest active streak is North Carolina’s seven straight years with at least one team title.
Iwai had a 14.433 on the vault, tied with Nebraska’s Tyler Flores for first. Landen Blixt of Michigan was third (14.366).
Flores, Nathan Roman (14.800 on the parallel bars) and Kelton Christiansen (14.400, high bar) each won individual titles for the second-place Sooners.
Kim scored a 14.466 to win gold on the floor to beat Richard (14.400). Kuebler and Tate Costa of Illinois finished third with 14.166.
Brandon Dang (Illinois) won the pommel horse with a score of 14.700, Michigan’s Aaronson Mansberger was second (14.566) and Colby Aranda of Oklahoma finished third with 14.133 points.
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