Despite their illustrious histories both Manchester football clubs have failed to make the top 10 in a new league of the most successful teams in Europe based on trophies won.
United finished a relatively respectable 12th, whereas the Citizens fared much worse, ending up 67th, with several other clubs around them also having had recent large investments.
This is not particularly surprising with City, given they were in the old Division Two as recently as 1999.
It does, however, raise questions over how Manchester United find themselves below the likes of Dynamo Kiev.
The answer to this revolves around one man: Alex Ferguson.
United’s trophy haul pre-Fergie was relatively poor, and the Red Devils would have found themselves joint with Everton and Spurs in 52nd place without him.
Yet, after the Scot’s 39 trophies, United find themselves in a more favourable position.
If you were to combine Fergie’s trophies with St. Mirren, Aberdeen, and United he would finish 24th, level with Maccabi Tel Aviv, and above Arsenal.
The league itself was made by Reddit user Kermv by searching through Europe’s top divisions and counting any trophies, ranging from pre-season to league championships.
The flaw with this is that teams that were successful in the past, such as Nottingham Forest, who would rank joint 40th, are not included.
Despite this the league is still a remarkable piece of work, and makes you wonder just what the European footballing world would be like if success truly was matched to a team’s trophy haul.
The first, and probably most shocking, answer is that instead being one of Europe’s super-teams consistently dominating proceedings, it would be Linfield FC.
The team from Northern Ireland have a remarkable haul of 219 trophies in a 129 year history.
Sixty-two of these were won between 1975 and 2014, with managers Roy Coyle and David Jeffrey winning 31 each.
Although the nature of the Northern Irish Premier League makes these statistics slightly less impressive.
The reason for this is because there are only really two teams in for a shout of winning anything, with the other being Glentoran.
This is a recurring theme at the top of table as teams who traditionally dominate their respective leagues make up the top 10.
For example, the second place team is Rangers (115), followed by Celtic (101), FC Barcelona (82) and Real Madrid (79).
Image courtesy of Sky Sports, via YouTube, with thanks.
