Thumper Posted July 15 Share Posted July 15 This whole thing was coma-inducing. Its two saving graces were that it didn't have vuvuzelas and England didn't win it. Also possibly that the country of Argentina has declared blood feud against Scotland, thus preventing the worst team in the tournament from stinking up any more games. I've never thought a previous tournament was actively bad before. Sure, 90 and 98 lost a lot of their glamour after we got sent straight home, I've never hated any team more than Italy in 2006 (saving perhaps England in 2010, but they got their comeuppance in the most hilarious manner possible), and Luis Suarez has existed, but I've generally still actually looked forward to watching them. This one was like that Simpsons clip. The only match that was even remotely open was our messy suicide on the opening night. Bring back the ball that let everyone ping in forty-yarders by accident all the time. That was great laughs. -1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jives Miguel Posted July 15 Share Posted July 15 It was a good tournament on the whole. The 3rd round of the group games was a poor affair due to a lack of jeopardy in some of the games. the worst tournaments of all time remain 2008, 2010, 2012 when Spain bored everyone to tears with their mind numbing "tiki-taka". -1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jambomo Posted July 15 Share Posted July 15 I don’t know if it’s because I was there for a bit and got to the Scotland games but I’ve loved this tournament. Yeah, some games were dull but there is never a tournament without some dull games, there always will be. The group games were largely good to watch and so were quite a few of the knockout matches. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VincentGuerin Posted July 15 Share Posted July 15 (edited) International football is just quite poor now in comparison to club football, when it comes to the top sides anyway. The wind has been blowing this way for years now, and we're generally seeing poor tournaments. 2010 was really bad. 2012 was ok-ish. 2014 had its moments but wasn't great. 2016 was dreadful. 2018 was like 2014, ok with good moments, Euro 2020 was a poor tournament, I didn't watch Qatar, and this Euros has been a bit of a slog after a bright start. Basically, there are no good teams. Not really good ones. Club football at the top level is now so far detail-based that it's very hard to replicate that standard with players you only see every few months. Top clubs spend a fortune in time and money scouting players to within an inch of their lives to make sure their left-back has just the right attributes to allow their system to work, and it'll then be obsessively worked on with elite coaches day-in-day-out. National teams can't match that, but they're using players who are made for the modern game. It just doesn't work. The consequence is a dearth of genuinely good sides with interesting styles of play, especially when compare to what people see in the club game every week. Spain are a good team, but no more than that. Italy won the last Euros and were far from good. Portugal won the Euros before that, and they were terrible. The standard is iffy and the reasons for it are quite easy to understand when you stop and think about it. The goal at international level is doing as good a job as possible of masking the inevitable deficiences in your team, which has been put together in a way no modern club team would be. The outcome is generally stodgy low-risk football played by poorly-balanced teams full of players who are fucking knackered. So, it's shite, really. Edited July 15 by VincentGuerin 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RandomGuy. Posted July 15 Share Posted July 15 While I so think the tournament, and style of most teams in general, was boring, I do think its likely mostly an age thing and I've just simply tipped over a certain threshold for finding them exciting. There'll be 12yo kids out there buzzing about the whole thing. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PSJ.84 Posted July 16 Share Posted July 16 I quite enjoyed the tournament and definitely prefer international football to club football, at elite level anyway. I find both the Champions League and Premier League to be incredibly tedious. 9 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dons_1988 Posted July 16 Share Posted July 16 Think this stuff about it being a dull tournament gets way overplayed. I enjoyed it but I enjoyed it relative to what tournament football is about. @VincentGuerin covered it in longer form but there’s a lot of factors that determine the quality just isn’t going to be great relative to the elite level of club football. But I disagree that it’s shite. international football still feels genuinely meaningful to the fans and a lot of the players involved. Not saying that doesn’t happen at club level but the champions league for example is elite quality but a bit soulless now for me. most games at a big tournament are high stakes, high tension, often competitive. This can stifle quality but it also creates the feeling of a really big occasion. I’ve always loved that. The smaller nations are always the most fun to watch in this regard as they are often full of players who will never play at a higher level than this. Austrias run, Georgia beating Portugal, turkeys run and game against Austria , even Albania taking the lead against Italy were really fun moments. Football would be far worse off without these tournaments. 14 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thumper Posted July 16 Share Posted July 16 It's not boring because it's low quality ffs. Ruud Gullit and Marco Van Basten would get pumped off of most teams in this tournament. If anything it's that nearly every team is very very good and knows all of their opponents intimately from playing at the top levels of international club football that's the problem. The World Cup mixes this up a tiny bit more because not every South American player plays in the European top flights and you've got the odd properly diddy team (unlike in the Euros where even the worst team in the whole tournament contained a Champions League winner) to add unpredictability. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael W Posted July 16 Share Posted July 16 If you take out Scotland, watching international football is more enjoyable than elite club football. Elite club football is just so fucking boring. The players are all overcoached into specific roles within a system that cannot be deviated from and there are just about zero surprises. Everyone knows everything there is to know about their opponents as well so the mystery is completely removed, with the consequences being a genuinely good game is by exception. The game has been ruined by spreadsheets, essentially. International football is not immune from this, but you don't have weeks upon weeks of drilling it into your right back that he must not cross the half way line unless the ball is within the third quadrant of the pitch or whatever given scenario the spreadsheet showed the opponents suffered a 0.001xG reduction from. You also have to play with what you have rather than what you can buy, which obviously lends itself to the larger countries doing better by design, but does mean there are limits to the way in which some things can be addressed, which makes the game a bit more interesting. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VincentGuerin Posted July 16 Share Posted July 16 3 hours ago, Thumper said: It's not boring because it's low quality ffs. Ruud Gullit and Marco Van Basten would get pumped off of most teams in this tournament. If anything it's that nearly every team is very very good and knows all of their opponents intimately from playing at the top levels of international club football that's the problem. The World Cup mixes this up a tiny bit more because not every South American player plays in the European top flights and you've got the odd properly diddy team (unlike in the Euros where even the worst team in the whole tournament contained a Champions League winner) to add unpredictability. Depends what you mean. The players are excellent, but the teams, compared to top level club teams, are all quite deeply flawed. Man City would cuff Spain. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thumper Posted July 16 Share Posted July 16 1 hour ago, VincentGuerin said: Man City would cuff Spain. Man City cost more to assemble, given any calculation at all of inflation or equivalent goods, than the Suez and Panama Canals combined with the Great Wall of China. 99.9999999% of all teams in the history of Earth would get cuffed by Man City. You are not "low quality" if you do not hope to beat Man City. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monkey Tennis Posted July 16 Share Posted July 16 1 hour ago, VincentGuerin said: The players are excellent, but the teams, compared to top level club teams, are all quite deeply flawed. Man City would cuff Spain. I agree. And it's precisely this fact which makes the International game infinitely more appealing than the top levels of the club game. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VincentGuerin Posted July 16 Share Posted July 16 39 minutes ago, Thumper said: Man City cost more to assemble, given any calculation at all of inflation or equivalent goods, than the Suez and Panama Canals combined with the Great Wall of China. 99.9999999% of all teams in the history of Earth would get cuffed by Man City. You are not "low quality" if you do not hope to beat Man City. I'm not disagreeing with that, generally. But the standard is lower than the standard at the top end of the club game. That's why a lot of modern tournaments are pretty rubbish. The teams are poorly put together and modern top-level football is very hard to play without extremely good preparation. These teams can't function in the same way as club teams, but have tired players who are used to functioning in well-oiled club teams. You see the result in stodgy games between teams set up not to lose, but lacking the cohesion of the club teams to make that approach watchable. Some people prefer that, some people don't. I find both the top end of the club game and international tournaments these days leave me relatively cold. -1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Crabbit Posted July 16 Share Posted July 16 I would rather watch international football than the Champions League, it has become boring and repetitive, same teams (mostly) when the knockout rounds arrive. The Europa league can be much more unpredictable as well. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thumper Posted July 16 Share Posted July 16 1 hour ago, VincentGuerin said: But the standard is lower than the standard at the top end of the club game. So? Holy f**k, do you only watch Champions League quarter finals or something? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VincentGuerin Posted July 16 Share Posted July 16 Just now, Thumper said: So? Holy f**k, do you only watch Champions League quarter finals or something? You're trying to argue against something I'm not saying. I'm saying why I think people view the football at these tournaments as boring. The reason is that it is boring, compared to club football. For reasons that are quite obvious. If you're only capable of reading that and believing I am a Champions League fan, then I'll just need to live with that. -1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jives Miguel Posted July 17 Share Posted July 17 Anyone who prefers (elite) club football to internationals is big time OFTW. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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