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Well this is very anachronistic, by the late 80s/early 90s the winner came from outside these countries as often as not. ‘71-‘73 Ajax in particular might just about count as a top tier side.100%. The UEFA Cup was the barometer of a league's strength in depth; look at how many Italian winners and finalists there are between 1989 and 1999.
To win the old European Cup you had to (usually) get by a maximum of one English side, one West German side, one Spanish side and one Italian side. That's 4 top tier sides in the whole competition. Given the fact it was an open draw, you could get instances like in 1987/88 where Napoli and Real Madrid were drawn together in the first round, so round 2 is automatically going to be one big side down.
Also last year’s winners qualified, so you did often have two big clubs from these countries. But it is true that you could occasionally get an easy run to the final.