The 2023-24 season in Europe could end up being one big unpleasant surprise for some of the biggest football clubs in history — if only they could rage-quit and smash the restart button.
Let's name the famous European teams threatened with relegation in their respective leagues.
Ajax. The 36-time Dutch champions and four-time Champions League winners are currently dead last in Eredivisie, winning just once — on matchday one. A combination of poor decisions at the board level and in the transfer market landed Ajax in this dire situation.
Basel. The 20-team Swiss champions are rock bottom with 25 goals conceded from 11 games. Although they last won the league in 2017, the current fall is still too drastic: they usually hang around the top spots, not relegation. Last year, they played in the semifinals of the Conference League.
Their problem seems to be a bloated squad of players that are not good enough. Even if they stay where they are, their saving grace could be the relegation phase: the league is split into two sections at the end of the regular season with the bottom half fighting for European spots and the bottom half fighting relegation.
Lyon. Everything is bad at Lyon, the seven-time French champions who dominated the league in the 2000s even better than PSG in the 2010s. They have been underperforming for years but boy, their form this season is worse than shit-filled croissants. To make matters worse, their team bus was recently attacked by Marseille ultras and a missile hit head coach Fabio Grosso in the face (in the title image).
Meanwhile, threats to players from Lyon's ultras don't work but their American owner is convinced they're not going down, which is an arrogant thing to say — just ask how Saint-Etienne and Bordeaux feel about their travails in Ligue 2.
Elsewhere, Schalke are toying with relegation from Bundesliga 2 (they're 16th out of 18) and so are Sampdoria in Serie B (18th out of 20).
