He’s probably been watching the corrupt officiating in the Germany v Denmark game

Don't know what you've been watching but this has been one of the better EUROs for me. The England games of course has been boring but that's due to their boring set up.

So football is partly rubbish because Switzerland beat Italy?

There's almost no sports forum I've been on (tennis, golf, F1, boxing etc) where there aren't many fans all nostalgic about the glory days of the sport. My theory is that our favorite era of any favorite activity (football, film or whatever) tend to be our younger, formative years and we eventually find it all less compelling as we get older. There's also the saturation coverage of all our favorite viewing pleasures in a way that didn't really exist 2 decades ago, so we get our fix very easily and it loses its value.

Also not sure what Italy getting battered by Switzerland has to do with football being boring.

There's some truth though to the reality that modern players don't seem to have the same individual flair as older generations. Probably gets drilled out of them from the youth setup. Leave aside the fact no current player could lace Messi or CR7's boots, where are the Ronaldos and Ronaldinhos and Rivaldos. Is there even a PL player today as exciting as Hazard? Or Henry. Or Bergkamp. Or Robben.

The last World Cup produced arguably the greatest final ever with Messi and Mbappe both living up to the hype.

This Euros has seen some great upsets - Georgia, Italy, Austria

Agree with the sentiment of the article. Where will the next Del Piero, Roberto Baggio, Zola or Di Canio come from?

Are coaching methods becoming so strict that they’re coaching potentially beautiful players out of the game? That’s how it seems to me. Everything just seems so robotic to me now

Tennis is rubbish and struggling post Fed, Nadal and Serena era so not sure why he's using that sport as a yardstick.

He is just fed up that Brazil are crap and trying to promote his time as a player when footballers were not athletes.

comment by (K̇ash) - Klopp's Last Dance - Free Palestine 🇵🇸 (U1108)
posted 2 minutes ago
Tennis is rubbish and struggling post Fed, Nadal and Serena era so not sure why he's using that sport as a yardstick.

He is just fed up that Brazil are crap and trying to promote his time as a player when footballers were not athletes.
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He played in the 90's and 00's sis - not in the 1940's. To say he played in a time when footballers were not athletes is pretty silly.

The mains club comps, prem, CL etc are boring because they’ve been fiddled with so much.

When money becomes the main reason for success then things get very boring. International football though influenced by the greed in some domestic leagues, and despite its own capitalist nature still retains a bit of footballs pre sell out spirit.

This article has a lot of words without really saying much.

There is currently a focus on control in games and playing as a team which has meant there's less risk during attacks for a lot of top sides.

Flair and low percentage football has suffered but it probably is also glory day bias too when looking back at football while we were growing up.

So much in one thread!

Yes, flair is missing. Yes, probably coaching responsible?

However, I'd agree that advances in fitness, coaching, tactics, analysis, technology has been responsible for both an advance in the standard of the top players overall but a decline in the mavericks.

Standards in all these things are so raised across the board that for a team to win they cannot have any player significantly deficient in any of the key metrics unless they are so so good in the other 9 outfield players.

The tech means opposing teams can too easily identify the weakness. A defender cannot be too slow or he's beaten every time. A player cannot be too one footed unless he's absolutely outstanding with it. A keeper cannot be averse to coming for a cross. All at the highest level of course because players with deficiencies can still be effective in lower leagues.

At the top level you need to meet a baseline of many stats. Anything else is bonus. FFS 4-4-2 is like a silent movie these days Love the teams that try different.

soccer is joga boringo now
players in sports want to be friends on twitter instead of bitter rivals
theres no more zedanho or peledonna to provide flair that wins matches
clubs now want to do the same thing 115 times over, even if it's kills the game

It’s all rose tinted glasses rubbish. Watch back nineties or early noughties full games back now and the vast majority of the games or the periods in game are turgid. Go back even further and it’s amplified even more. At the time though, you’d have rightly loved it.

It’s evolved, that’s all, as it always did. Watching football with older generations when I was growing up, they’d say the same thing and say it isn’t what it was. Of course it isn’t.

IMO there's been a shift more towards academic football. You don't see as many skillful players as you used to. Trickery, guile and players with the touch are losing out to more and more to players that just know how to pass and move.

I have been reluctant to accept this theory but in reality there’s some truth. even in pl it’s been a while since we had great individual players like Hazard, before that Bale etc.
we got spoilt with Messi and Ronaldo’s success (also Barca and Spain dominance produced great footfall and individual players).
I only see Mbappe as an exciting player across the continent. Even Vini as great as he is, doesn’t bring the flair Neymar does.
Football is now more than ever a game of system and tactics where you have to be an exceptional individual to get given free role in a top team. In fairness to coaches, who can you trust to be given a free role?

Does anyone tune into watch other teams play cos they’re exciting?

we got spoilt with Messi and Ronaldo’s success
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ronaldo was the prototype for today- had some flair but was mostly super direct and knew/knows how to get into positions 4 the goal.

Yes

Fraudiola & his disciples have made football boring

Too many teams playing the positional-possessional football stuff

It's all about systems now, not players

individual flair is coached out of players at academy level
vast majority of footballers coming through the academies are system players by the time they're 16/17

comment by Peks - Comanche Moon (U6618)
posted 16 minutes ago
individual flair is coached out of players at academy level
vast majority of footballers coming through the academies are system players by the time they're 16/17
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Indeed but per my post they are instructed to copy the first team and they are looking for the players that have that level of basics to get entry to the pro game. Very few players make that level from outside club academies nowadays.

It’s far more exciting than that patch between 08-12 when Spain stunk international football out with defensive possession or Tiki Taka - yet some love that.

I’m old enough to remember there being no pass back rule and a ridiculously low scoring Italia 90 - statistically the lowest scoring ever. Trust me, that was faaacking boring.

Ronaldo was in the squad for arguably the boring World Cup final ever Brazil vs Italy in 1994

Football is just as exciting as it ever was. People just forget the bad games. Who remembers teams like Denmark and Greece winning the Euros by defending 90 mins every game?