The Premier League is one match away from providing winners of all three current UEFA club competitions after recent successes for Aston Villa and Crystal Palace, according to the report.
Crystal Palace beat Rayo Vallecano 1-0 in the UEFA Conference League final in Leipzig, with Jean-Philippe Mateta scoring the decisive goal to secure Palace’s first European final victory and bring outgoing head coach Oliver Glasner’s tenure to a high point, the report says.
Aston Villa claimed the UEFA Europa League title a week earlier, defeating Freiburg 3-0 in Istanbul. That victory ended Villa’s long wait for silverware, marking their first major trophy since 1996 and their first European trophy since 1982, according to the report.
Arsenal can complete the sweep if they defeat defending champions Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League final on Saturday in Budapest. The Gunners, who returned to the final for the first time in 20 years after securing the Premier League title, seek to complete a domestic and continental double, while PSG are on course for a five-trophy season, the report notes.
A Premier League clean sweep would be rare but not entirely unprecedented in European history. The same country has supplied winners of two UEFA competitions in a single season on 12 occasions, but supplying winners of three different UEFA competitions in one season has happened only once in more than 60 years, the report adds. No country has yet won the modern trio of Champions League, Europa League and Conference League, the latter introduced in 2021.
The sole previous three-way sweep came in 1990, when three Italian clubs won the European Cup, the UEFA Cup and the Cup Winners’ Cup: Sampdoria beat Anderlecht with Gianluca Vialli scoring twice in extra time in the Cup Winners’ Cup, Juventus edged Fiorentina over two legs for the UEFA Cup, and AC Milan edged Benfica with a Frank Rijkaard goal to lift the European Cup. Should Arsenal prevail in Budapest, the Premier League would match that rare level of continental dominance, according to the report.
