VAR being scapegoated is ironic. It just exposed how bad the referees are. Back then, there was so many bad calls and the same people who used to cry about those decisions will be the same ones who hate VAR. Refereeing needs a huge overhaul.
VAR started when both Messi and Ronaldo were on the edge of their prime, thing is, all of Barca and Real UCL wins, also copa america being like every 3 months and WC 2022 in Qatar, all of that was a clear push for the biggest stars to get their trophies. every year there is some match that is questionable referee calls...
I would say players have become better tactically and become efficient , however the reason why people think old is better than new because of How open ended games used to be, now most games are very tactical and cagey
As someone watching both regional and top flight football i can say you this: No. VAR makes the game worse. You also can accept a bad call way better when there isnt a second referee using 5 minutes of our time and modern technology withseveral replays and angles and still make a bad call. The fact that people stay quite after a goal when there is even the slightest chance of something, somewhere, maybe, possibly wrong 5 minutes earlier is a death sentence. Either copy it from the sports that know how to do it (eg everyone else), including imposing a strict timelimit and assess the quality of refereeing or let it be. But since football officials are unable to not want to reinvent the wheel our best shot is getting rid of it.
Football has suffered from death by over analysis. All players now have chest monitors which record distance travelled, average position, heart rate etc. So managers are able to control where players are by giving feedback based on real data. Everything is too formulaic. Skillful players are no longer allowed to just "go out and play".
@@BodybuildingSteve You know, i was watching these because i am a fan of the theory, everihting as it becomes big, money and mainstream becomes bigger and eventualy fail, and was watching these and not long ago an F1 channel and honestly it sounds the same, F1 in the past cars were small, agile, no limits in tire, no limites in pit stops or re fueling, allowing small teams compete, and strategi tactics but in order to prevent death, wich i agree is sad, and bad but killing the sport in a sport wich any one that enters know you are risking your life, i mean F1 now is boring, no overtakes no competition, and every rule supposly to make more competition, make it less, football, i remember a friend, or ex friend talk me football before, was a party, was fun, yes people behave and you watch the matches, shoots from long distances and more things happen than plans, and when you watch it now, i was never a football fan but now, in the past athlete run and play the 90 minutes was a sport, now is boring and in very few feel fun, i am not a fan of footbal and only some intrest in F1, but both look to be fun in the past and look boring now
But..but.. we have Raphael Leao now!! He smiles when he plays!! Except that he is not even a 2% of player that Ronaldinho was hahaha. Raphael "Retarded Joga Bonito" Leao
I was just dreaming - to break the systematic / robotic football of the present day, would it not be nice to amend the rules such that each team could only play at most 9 players (including the keeper) on the defensive half?
Ronaldinho used to get in at 6 from the club after hitting the gear the whole night. Then he showed up at the Camp Nou 10 hours later and bamboozled defenders. Game’s gone.
Are we still saying that Cantona's press conference wasn't an obvious dig at the reporters, who all joined together to pretend to be stupid rather than understand.
The idea is that the press reporters are seagulls waiting for him to throw them metaphorical sardines, which he wasnt going to do. It's hard to know if that was intentional, but it makes sense. There is an irony in that his seagull speech was a massive news story though. @@TheEyeball37
Watching city win things is about as satisfying and authentic as watching a computer winning a chess match. Soulless and boring. That's not even counting the off field stuff.
Football certainly feels less fun than it did 10-15 years ago. The days of watching Ronaldinho tearing up the pitch and pulling off audacious skills and tricks in matches have long gone. Now that the money has gotten silly in the game and that VAR has now become a cliche of a talking point, it feels like we arnt actually talking about football anymore but the circumstances in which the game is played. Money, transfers and VAR have become a distraction to how we watch football now
Well, now Ronaldinho has overshadowed his football career in retirement after trying to circumvent a travel ban (his Spanish and Brazilian passports were confiscated for tax offences) by travelling with a fake Paraguayan passport to Paraguay. He sat 5 months in prison and house arrest for it, and IMO should have been convicted for it. But I guess "Rules for thee but not for me" does work because he was allowed to leave Paraguay completely unscathed. And THAT is not an April Fools Joke.
Who talks about the circumstances football is played in. People who are passionate about football still talk about the football games somewhat. Money and tranfers should not distract you between football game, when that would be weird, if it did distract you.😂
1) football has gone crap 2) Stop gaslighting people into believing Cantona’s statement was incomprehensible. It made perfect sense. The seagulls following the trawler represented the media waiting for a tag line and ironically he was right because bizarre is the word they always attach to it.
Exactly I didn’t get it at first but then I watched it with context and it was perfectly clear what he meant. He made it sound incoherent on purpose. They always tried to make him look like a fool and he was many things but a fool was not one of them.
LMAO. That is because in 2006 you were young !! In 1986 the teams were full of legends as well. For example Denmark : Sören Lerby (Ajax, Bayern, PSV EC1), Morten Olsen (Anderlecht Uefa cup 1983), Ivan Nielsen (PSV 1988 EC1), Jan Mölby (LFC), Michael Laudrup (Juve, Barcelona dream team, Real, Ajax), Frank Arnesen (Ajax, Valencia, PSV, EC1), Jesper Olsen (Ajax, ManU), Preben Elkjaer (FC Köln & Hellas Verona champions, #2 at Ballon d'Or ), Allan Simonsens (Ballon d'Or 1977 ! Borussia MG, EC1 final, 2x Uefa cup, , Barcelon EC2) ...... These are 80s and 1992 Legends ! But you were too young/not born yet to remember them ! Another reason : Before 2000 (or better before 2005, when youtube started) is not so much footage available, to see how good players are. 'Seeing is Memory' ! Furthermore since 1993 with the Champions League, and more so since 1996 with the Bosman case, when footballers could play all over Europe and when there was more room for non-European players, you would see all 'the legendary players' in one league. 'Legend' means for you: 'has played for years in the Champions League ' ! Before the Bosman arrest all those Portuguease players would play in Portugal, so you would hardly know them. And the great 70s/80s team of Poland and the 86/88 stars of Soviet-Union/Dinamo Kiev had too difficult names to remember anyway !
@@lws7394 my point is that, compared to lets say the 2010’s or even the 2020’s now, these teams had some crazy squads. Of course there’s been plenty of talent in recent times and plenty of future legends, but man a lot squads back then were STACKED compared to now.
@@LargeLarg3y’all guys can’t understand that for something to be called legendary there’s most be some time aging for it possible. I mean yal talking about 90’s and 00’s when we had the greatest rivality in football in our time plus some many leggends that are retiring now or next year. Don’t know what you’ll say about our era in the next 20 years and trust me the ones coming up now are nothing less.
Maybe in terms of athletic ability and tactical efficiency. Which means modern teams would most likely beat teams from back then. But football is meant to be a spectator sport so it has gone down in quality.
Exactly 👍👍 now every football game have a pattern ,passing and passing and passing,like nobody can shoot outside of penalty area. It became so boring to watch.
I think there is something else too. Physically, the players are much better than they used to be. There is just no space to be found on the pitch. Pressing and closing down tactics have also improved. So we see 90 minutes of players desperately trying to find a bit of space. At this point, I think the only solution is playing 10 v 10 or 9 v 9 or making the pitch (and probably the goals) significantly larger.
@MusicalTranscendence there's only a few teams that press non stop in the whole of Europe. What are you talking about it? Football has lost its soul, meaning the unpredictability in it. There were always teams that played possession type of football, even in the 70's. Now it's so boring, beyond belief.
I think that the players in the past had more "specialized" traits and characters that gave you some sort of feeling that you can attach them with. Vidic, Edgar Davids, Gattuso, Roy Keane, Pirlo, Beckham, Zidane, Ronaldinho, Inzaghi, Crouch. All very different players with special traits and trademarks. Players nowadays have a more well rounded game which can makes them feel less "special" and unique. That could be a reason why the game seems more boring.
Its the age of the internet, their are no secrets. In the past you needed to find someone that spent their days studying cwrtain tactics and revealing strategies. Nowadays their are no secrets so you cant get away with w6you could in the past. Just how all industries have affected, look at music. Everyone sounds the same, in my youth we had so many different sounding rappers and artists it was amazing
Agreed but i would put Edgar Davids out of that list tho, as he was a kinda well rounded player, probably one of the most well rounded of his generation. It's true that he was mostly known for his aggressive defense but he also got skills (unlike Gattuso). He gave the best as a cm but he also used to play winger early in his career, he was a good dribbler , could carry the ball up the field and had a deadly long shot too.
Robben said that had he been trained at a team like ajax, he wouldnt have become the player he was. They have a system and all r drilled into it, meaning robbens way of playing wouldve been drilled out of him. Players now r better athletes, more technically sound and understand tactics better, though i think thats just due to when they were born and not cuz they r actually better. However, most players now grow up in a system or have coaches who dont allow for individuality to shine through cuz well, the system is the most important part. Its why we dont see as many long range goals anymore, cuz statistically speaking, those r not as good a shot as one inside the box. Ive heard stories of youth team coaches (and pro coaches) giving their players shit for scoring from outside during training cuz its not "a good shot". Ribery said once that during a game, guardiola kept shouting what to do at him and he thought "damn, just let me play the game". Of course guardiola is a top coach, but that just shows the point of "system above everything else".
The hype leading up to the 06 World Cup was incredible. The Joga Bonito campaign with Cantona and the Brazil team… everything was just hype. I miss the old Brazil
Yeah and Brazil hasn’t won in what will be 24-25 years by next WC. All that hype and posturing only to get smoked….that’s really what lead to the shift
@@maseratimitch2024 Brazil didn't get "smoked", you clown; it was just 1-0 to France (the finalists!) in the quarter finals. Bet you love an embellishment
The trend towards ever increasing efficiency in football reminds me oddly of the popularity of Backgammon. It’s been around for millennia but backgammon became really popular for gambling in the 1960s and 70s because they added a ‘doubling cube’ which meant either player could double the amount of money they were playing for at any time and the other player either has to accept the new stakes or concede the game. This made it incredibly popular in high stakes culture because any game was a few doubles away from being contested for outrageous amounts of money. There were huge world championship tournaments held in luxury resorts in the Caribbean with massive prize money, it’s also why it appears in the James Bond film Octopussy in 1983. What ended up killing backgammon though is once these tournaments started having huge financial incentives people took the time to create backgammon strategies that gave you the best statistical likelihood of winning. The games became predictable and formulaic and as these new strategist dominated, the loss of the unpredictability that brought it to prominence made the super independently wealthy fans lose interest. In turn the money being pumped into the tournaments dried up and so even the strategists left because it wasn’t a viable money making game anymore and now there is basically no such thing as a high stakes backgammon scene and there probably won’t be ever again. All that’s to say if football really is becoming more boring because of increasing efficiency, if it becomes a ‘solved’ game where we know what the best way to achieve success tactically will that drive fans away? And if it will how do you fix it or return to a more entertaining product?
This is what's happening to baseball now its been effiencied down to the 3 true outcomes of walk strikeout or home run. It sucks but you can't really help modern analytics.
@@corbing7786 Juiced balls and perfectly groomed fields have a lot to do with that The 3 outcomes becomes less viable if the home runs become long fly balls and bunts and slow grounders become an adventure to field
Very interesting to read, my only hope is that while we feel close to a solved game of fitness and positional play, there will still be tactical geniuses waiting in the wings ready to reinvent peak football.
Do we still not understand what Cantona was talking about in that interview! As a man that's seen Gladiator many times, I look back and take Cantona to simply mean "Are you not entertained?" The media followed him and hounded him for years, waiting for his customary moment of madness to arrive. It arrived. Why is everyone so shocked?
It's pretty obvious that Cantona is the trawler and the media are the seagulls. My interpretation was always that it was Cantona's way of saying, "You're only here to try and goad me into another controversy. I'm not going to give you that satisfaction. Goodbye."
“Nobody would suggest that Man city and Pep are getting the best out of Guardiola” got me laughing so hard. Name's Guardiola. Jack Guardiola. 🤣🤣🤣🤣 14:06
Football has become pretty boring. They’ve been saying it for decades but money really has ruined football. Every player is a robot nowadays. Very rarely does something spectacular happen. Just teams passing it about 30 yards out until they lose the ball. Man City’s centre backs are just there to stop counter attacks. They do most of their defending on the halfway line. Bland domination. I miss players who just took a shot on whenever they could. You don’t get players like Bergkamp or Berbatov these days. Guys who thought outside the box and did the unexpected, Cantona, even Tony Yeboah. Nobody breaks the mould nowadays.
Football is harder nowadays and has more entertainment. Just appreciate your time. We have Vinicuis, Mbappe, Haaland, Musiala, Foden, De jong and many more great footballers nowadays. Your problem is that you are stuck in the past. I do agree that money and VAR has ruined football at some percentage but there are so many good things that have improved in modern day football and It might be overlooked.
@@milanvranjesevic4789 Marketing, entertainment, team conditions, excitement of the game and there are many young stars or great talents now who are: Mbappe, Foden, Haaland, Vinicius, Rodrigo, Musiala, Guler, Yamal, Garnacho, Mainoo, Bellingham, Emdrick and more.
It has become very robotic, systematic. Individual brilliance is not cultivated. Any expression of excellent ball control and skill is criticized as showboating and deemed unnecessary even though it's what i like the most about football. When you get dirty tackled as a result they dont always penalize the offense, as if condoning the act as punishment for having great flair. Lots of things going on.
I do not really agree. Skills need to be effective. Ronaldinho for example was showing off while being effective and its the greatest thing I've ever seen! Richarlison and Anthony do skills for the sake of skills and it's only right to critique it.
The club conditions are way better. You don't wanna live 50 years in the past. The condition nowadays are super healthy were there is a lot of hardwork. Cruyff used to smoke and was still good why? Because the club conditions we'rent class at the time and he wouldn't be as great in modern day football.
Marko van Basten had a rant recently before Romania but after the lackluster pool phase. Said, that our footballers nowadays don't come from the street anymore, they're academy players who are told what to do and they have no identify or creativity to solve stuff themselves (attacking and defence) if the system doesn't work. He said he himself even used to communicate a lot with the defenders like baresi maldini how to get the ball upfront the best, and fastest also in-match in dressing room...they solved stuff themselves if the system wasn't working. Nowadays everyone waiting for instructions..and if the system isn't functioning theres disconnect between the players
It’s quite interesting how much regard Pep has for a coach like Bielsa if you view their styles as differing between creating or controlling the levels of chaos within the game. Bielsa’s Leeds at their best in the premier league were basically chaos machines sometimes turning games in to farces and yet Guardiola has never ending praise for Bielsa. I think this just goes to show even the bald fraud despises the monster he has helped create.
Bielsa favors high-pressing, short-passing possession-based teams playing out of a fluid 3-4-3 or 4-3-3 formation. His training is high-intensity repetition of basic situations, such that no situation faced in a game will be entirely novel, allowing players to improvise within a fixed system. This is essentially an extension of the Michels-Cruyff system from Ajax and Barcelona (though Bielsa developed it from Argentine sources). It surprises me not one bit that Guardiola esteems him so. Other followers of Bielsa: Mauricio Pocchetino, Jorge Sampaoli, Tata Martinez, and Diego Simeone (though Simeone is far more defensive-minded than the others). Bielsa's downfall has always been the exhaustion of his team at the end of a season due to the intensity of his training and playing styles (usually with a small squad) -- and this you can definitely see with his Leeds teams. "If players were not human," he is said to have said, "I would never lose."
@@drs-xj3pb I agree, it's not surprising as Bielsa's Leeds were build on a mix of high fitness levels and being exceptionally well drilled on certain movements and passes - for example there were a lot of very similar goals scored in terms of the patterns of play that led to them. While it probably looked chaotic to someone who hadn't seen much of them it was extremely well organised but took a lot of calculated risks in the build up play and often shunned the more 'pragmatic' side of the game (e.g. continuing to attack with the same levels of risk rather than slowing the game down to hold onto a narrow lead) That said, I disagree completely on the exhaustion part (at Leeds anyway). Leeds were still going very strongly at the end of the second and third seasons under Bielsa. The year it fell apart was in part due to his insistence on having a small squad mixed with very inadequate PL recruitment from the DoF (outside of one or two exceptions). That and an injury crisis which saw them having a squad of about 9 fit senior players at one point and a bench in at least one match consisting entirely of a bunch of extremely inexperienced young players (the oldest being 21, the youngest being a 15 year old) who are now mostly league 1- national league players. You could point to the injury crisis as an example of exhaustion, but I don't think that's entirely fair as iirc it was the newer signings who were often the ones most frequently out injured alongside players with lingering issues from previous injuries. It was more the importance and positions of the injured players that caused problems; 3 CB's, 1 LB and 2 ST's, which exposed the lack of depth in other areas too with a lot of the squad having to play out of position to cover for absences (e.g Ayling at CB and Dan James as a striker), not fully fit when playing (Bamford, Rodrigo, Firpo) or simply not good enough for the premier league at that point in their career.
@@jackdelacey2505 VAR was a good decision. It should've been implemented earlier. VAR is what puts a halt to referee's biased decision, which often favored traditionally stronger team, player, country. You're not sure if it was a goal? It is a goal if stronger team/player/country did it. It's not if it were other way around. That's what often happened before VAR.
Football did peak in 2006, great unique players, exciting games, even when it comes to console games, the great Pro Evolution 6 came out in 2006. I never knew how good I had it. Had I known I would have appreciated that time even more.
In my opinion We probably have the most athletic and technically gifted players of all time due to sports science and fitness etc But the players have become identical and boring with no spontaneity and need to be told what to do and when to shoot The game also has too much cheating which slows the game down Maybe we should use var to call out diving and we need to start booking diving more
"The game also has too much cheating which slows the game down " Ain't no way you said that like the 00's and 90s didn't have that with the Catenaccio from Italian teams
Not that I'm disagreeing with you but Brazilians are still physically finished before they reach 30. And as a United fan i'd take the technically gifted Anderson or Nani over the more physically gifted Anthony if that guy even excels at anything. Carrick vs Mctominay - Skill vs Physicality. Dutch football from the 90's vs today. Sure they are fitter but my gawd total football was legendary. Sports science doesn't increase player skill and only benefits super disciplined players like Ronaldo or Ibra but you could argue that they are genetically superior to begin with. Didn't help Rooney. Neymar has also left the building.
@@paquinraino8180 yeah the cheating/diving is a major issue which i am dumbfounded there isnt done anything about. But it's always been like this, and has actually been worse before. Still, now that we have VAR, we definitely should focus on improving the referees to the point that they can use it to the fullest extent and go harsh on things like diving because it ruins the game
Anyone who watched the abomination of a title contention game of yesterday between City and Arsenal can simply understand that if such game of such high stakes is a snooze fest then football indeed got worse. Everyone wants to hold onto the ball doing f*ck all with it but pass laterally because the other team are a bunch of spineless lizards with their buttocks stuck on the goal line.
There has to be a balance here. I may be speaking from a biased point of view, as a teenage football fan, but we can't pretend that the current tactical chess has become a bad idea. Recently i watched an "old school" Premier League game from the 90's and i was WIDELY surprised by the lack of quality. It was just throwing the ball long all the time, losing turnovers at the most dangerous areas. No... "La Pausa" as they call it now. Just throw, throw, kick, kick and rush. I didn't like it one bit. I mean, are those types of games the ones people are missing? Its one thing to be spineless and not try to attack, another to run like headless chickens for the goals.
@@catmeowing4329nostalgia blinds people. we'll look back at games in 30 years from now and be astonished at the lack of proper initiative and positioning too.
That's just nostalgia bias. People complained about elite club football being nothing but "parking the bus" and athleticism all through the 2000s especially in the EPL. A lot of big games in the 2000s were absolute snoozefests, people talked about it constantly back then too. High stakes games like WC and UCL semis and finals used to have a reputation for being guaranteed to be cagey and boring but have been much more exciting lately, the 2018 and 2022 WC finals and SFs were some of the most exciting ever. The 1990, 1994, 2002, 2006, 2010 and 2014 WC finals had 7 total goals between them and 4 red cards (should've been 5 for De Jong). It was 0-0 at full time in 1994, 2010 and 2014. Both the 2018 and 2022 final had more goals than 90/94/06/10/14 finals combined
@@catmeowing4329well yh, same reason why it looks like players like ronaldhino or okocha are no more while it actually isn't true, it's that now you can't make those skills without big risk of losing the ball bc back then they gave so much space
@@catmeowing4329 Premier League in the 90's was shyte. Serie A and La Liga and maybe even Bundesliga were of superior quality as Premier League as English football was trying to recover from the 5 year European ban that was imposed onto English clubs because of what Liverpool fans did at Heysel.
As an American, the rigid specialization and systems in association football remind me a bit of how analytics have hurt baseball, in particular pitching. It used to be that you would see pitchers save their energy so they could pitch the whole game, the batter could put the ball in play and you'd see if the fielders could get him out. Now with more analytics and specialization in baseball, the fielders are only in the game to hit when their team is on offense and it is up to the pitcher to give maximum effort all of the time and strike everybody out. This means the ball isn't in play as much and managers are substituting pitchers out a few times a game which takes a few minutes each time that happens. This leads to most sports fans feeling that baseball is boring even though like with Pep Guardiola's managing this is how the game has evolved to produce more winning.
If a manager is the first man sacked for poor results, it makes perfect sense that they would impose strategies that get results first. Contrary to popular belief, football is a professional sport, and as such winning tends to come before entertainment.
And let’s not forget that players are getting paid to do their job on the field. Part of that, is to do what their boss tells them to do. Freedom on the pitch is not given or earned, it is a privilege and coaches will only allow it as long as it fits within their philosophy and system. The rate at which your creative freedom on the pitch is allowed will depend on the high percentage of its output.
If it is not entertaining, people will stop watching over generations and there will be no money. You might think that is impossible, but it is just a matter of time.
Ah yes, the dirtiest game in fifa history🇳🇱🇵🇹..all I remember is my dad yelling at the tv almost every minute or two, he was cussing out every player besides the keepers...what a horrendous game. And we lost as well. And 13 years later, we lost to portugal 1-0 again in nations league final. Portugal is Oranje's boogey team.
You should look up a match Chile - Italy at the 1962 World Cup. The battle of Santiago. They have karate kicks, boxing, rugby tackles, a player removed from the pitch by the police. There's a video I'd recommend "Italy v Chile World Cup 1962 The Battle of Santiago" from a channel called broodje80. It has the reporter at the start questioning whether the World Cup can survive that match, calling it "the most stupid, disgusting exhibition of football in history". So... check it out! 😀
Holland also lost to Portugal on three other occassions that were significant: In late 2000, they lost 2-0 at home to Portugal in Wcup qualifying which proved decisive. They lost 2-1 in the Euro 2004 semi-final, and then 2-1 again at Euro 2012 in the group stage.
Watching the Man City vs Arsenal fixture yesterday, it brought to mind a chess match between two Grandmasters, rather than a game of football. The resulting stalemate was the perfect expression of this corporate control masquerading as football.
The Liverpool - Man City game last month was very good though, end to end and enjoyable. And as long as I’ve watched football, there have been good games and there have been bad games. The reality is yesterday we had two teams who were scared to lose, that has always happened too.
I started liking football in the early 00s, when there were still many types of players, like the classic playmakers, who didn't have to run much and could just create chances, it was much more about individuality. When I look at football today, it's extremely fast and the pitch is full of athletes, which is also pretty impressive on a different level, but everything is much more predictable due to extreme reliance on systems and flawlessly executed routines. For instance, there was a guy named Pavel Horvath in the Czech Republic who retired just 10 years ago, he was overweight and barely ran, so when he got to play the Champions League and Europa League for Viktoria Plzeň, the opposition would laugh at him for a minute, until he perfectly passed the ball across the pitch and his team would score (for instance, Viktoria won on aggregate 5:0 against Napoli in 2013 and this player was a huge reason for it, even though he looked almost like post-retirement Sneijder). These were the things that made you love the game more, also because it made you (as a kid) feel like you could maybe make it on the professional level. When I look at the game today, it feels like watching perfectly programmed machines with superhuman physical abilities and even as a naive kid, I wouldn't be able to dream about playing on this level, because it feels almost unreal.
@@APsGTG Globalisation & digitalisation ironically lead to the opposite of pluralism & diversity and instead everything is just becoming homogeneous, uninspired and bland.
@@APsGTG especially true since this new world order is truly empty emotionally. Everybody is just drilled like a robot to accept it all and people do accept it, because they think they cant change anything, but in the end nobody is happy with it, expect some financial elitist gloablists and their banc accounts. Long story short: its just turbo capitalism. For todays players: you earn more than any footballer ever. Why even bother bringing the same spectacle they did? You pass the ball around for 90min and drive home in your lambo afterwards
True, might need another 10-15 years for a rebirth. I don’t even consider Endrick as generational talent, he’s just a modern 9. Messinho will be the best Brazilian talent probably since neymar or pato?
@@WhoAreYou905 i agree, endrick is only known for posting black and white pictures of him, making it look like he's the next pele, if it werent for the best pr team of all time everyone would realize that hes just some striker
Footballers are athletes now, first. And talent is second. When football was fun you had real ballers with talent. Now, it's just being able to run for 90 minutes without stopping.
The thing that bothers me the most is how the players today suck at shooting the ball. Mbappe literally never scored a free kick in his life, Haaland has like maybe two goals from outside of the box in his career.
You're bang on with how universal things have become; there used to be a lot more clashes of style between countries, if not between teams and managers. Now it feels like everyone's trying to copy the same systems and same philosophies. I reckon social media and familiarity with other leagues has played a big role with that.
Yep. Same thing is happening in the actual world as well with every western country following in the steps of America (again, due to social media). Globalisation. Honestly reminds me of in the Bible when it speaks about how the “whole world” will all come to be doing the exact same things.
Yes I used to watch certain leagues play to see the different styles of play but now it just seems like I'm watching the same thing with a different name.
Chiellini said a few years ago how Italy had lost its style trying to copy Spain and Guardiola. Instead of realising the veracity of what he said, people mostly vented against him. Italy were much better when they played their fierce defend and break style.
Unfortunately everything has gotten universal. The early days of MMA used to be one martial art against another like boxing versus wrestling but now everybody practices the same things. Even cities have lost their own uniqueness. They have the exact same stores and restaurants that you can find anywhere. It’s pretty sad
@@oldskoolmusicnostalgia Was italy really better because of their style of play or they just had better players? I do tend for the second one. Italy couldn't even manage to win a WC in their golden era and played awful football besides having a dream team. They managed to lose a WC besides having Baggio whose probably was the most talented italian player ever. On the other hand , in recent yearrs they were somehow able to win a European cup besides possessin one of the least talented squads ever.
The limited access to football is so true. I remember growing up supporting a neutral team but excited to watch united vs Depotivo on itv in the champsions league as you just didnt have access to the game
2006 was so stacked. Costa Rica had Wanchope, Ecuador Antonio Valencia, Paraguay Roque Santa Cruz, Trinidad & Tobago Dwight Yorke, Ivory Coast Drogba & Yaya, Iran Ali Daei, Mexico Rafa Márquez, Ghana Michael Essien, USA Howard & Dempsey, Croatia Modric, Japan Nakata, Korea Park Ji-sung, Togo Adebayor, Saudi Sami Al-Jaber and Ukraine had Shevchenko. In terms of pure star power and their legacy, on at least a national level, will never be repeated
The true star player of Trinidad & Tobago was Latapy, Ironically he hardly played in the world cup because we had to play boring football to survive. His style of play and age would have been a liability. The death of genius in the game.
exactly. I'm wondering why he didn't say anything about the starpower... there is barely a star in the Americas or Africa anymore. Eastern Europe has just Lewandowski and Modric which both are facing the end of their carreer, no Italian, Spaniard or Dutchman...
One important point. For unique styles and identity, we have national teams. This creates an immense anticipation for the big tournaments, that they are, in fact, something else. Instead of the highlight to get to see a game once a week, we get it once every two years. These tournaments get even more special because of the respite form the weekly grind. Let's go Sweden this summer! We have our best offense in decades, and will threaten any team! Oh, wait. We didn't qualify.
That Zidane take isn't too far off though, Zidane was a big game player. In Serie A, during the battle of the Trequartista(10), Baggio, Totti, and Rui Costa were a lot more consistent than Zidane when it came to producing magic week in week out. In Totti's case it was every week up until the injury. Which slowed him a tiny bit, and in Rui's case his love for Benfica which saved Benfica as a club itself. I have no doubt if Rui didn't ask to go to Benfica he would have been part Milan till 2007 if not longer and Benfica's current fortunes would be a lot different. He sacrificed part of his career for the love of his club.
@@spacecamel2501 Riquelme is one of the best footballers to ever grace the planet, but English media will have people convinced they had better players lol
yes, it's worse, for all the reasons you stated, and more. 1) too many games. making players focus on athleticism and tactics in training, making themselves pace more, plus what Bruce said, and you have what we have today. 2) too much money at stake. leading to a top-down risk-averse approach to the game, and optimization strategies to minimize risk at every level 3) the lack of what italians call "bandiere". it has become so much about money, that not even the players care about the game, about the clubs anymore. that's why players like a Totti, Del Piero, Gerrard, Maldini, Raul, Zanetti... you know, the symbols of clubs who remain loyal no matter what, who stand the test of time, who grew up with the club, who are intrinsically linked. 4) and this is the biggest one: the curbing of the individual. to add to the points you made about flair and unpredictability. Grealish is the perfect example. he didn't become a better player with Guardiola, it's just that he followed instructions in a well oiled machine and he happened to be there when they won the Treble. he didn't transform Grealish into a "Treble winner" because Grealish was far from being fundamental in that win. but anyway, back to the main point, coaches nowadays, as you stated, expect that from everyone: do what you are told, follow instructions, don't stray too much from your position and assignments... ...and that's taught at the youngest levels. and kids these days join these schools and academies younger, and there are more of these schools and academies, leading to even more uniformity and a greater loss of unpredictability. i want to cite/paraphrase a recent interview with one of the greatest players ever, Roberto Baggio: "kids these days don't play in the streets anymore, they don't just put two shirts down and 'that's our goal, let's play', they go to school and are part of the machine and the streets are empty, so they don't have the flair and technique they used to" (that's the gist of it, roughly) and he's not talking about the basic technique, because, again as you noted, it has gone way up, 'cause you don't really have as many centrebacks who can't pass the ball [for example], but today you don't even get a classic 9 like Pippo Inzaghi, who had little technique but great intuition about positioning which made him look like the luckiest player on earth year in year out, because with all that drilling, training, discipline, following of instructions, you're slowly eroding and erasing the intuition, the flair, the elan... you've made a sport into a product, and we're part of the problem
one more thing i forgot that greatly illustrates the downward spiral of football: the (d)evolution of the Champions League, formerly Cup. it used to be only about the actual League Champions, nobody else, which made it a bit more unpredictable as a competition, and gave more chances to 'lesser' teams. now (again, as you noted), it's always the same in different configurations. it's the Richest League, not the champions considering how many clubs from the top leagues qualify, and through how many pre-qual stages small league winners need to get through to even get a chance to play some 3rd placed team from a mid tier league so if they win they get to play in the group stages, only to get humiliated because all their top talent got poached by the big clubs when they were still underage anyway oh, and that restriction on the CL meant that the UEFA Cup was much more important and prestigious, as you had a shitload of top tier clubs competing. it wasn't just 'that european cup for the poor', it was a legitimately great competition. and then they also axed the Cup Winners' Cup... ...all just so that the CL could have more clubs, more matches, more money to pocket. it's just... sad
Maybe I'm old and 30 now but I remember every player from a 2008-09 game between Chelsea and Liverpool but now I have no idea who plays for Milan or Barcelona in UCL playoffs other than a couple big names.
Easy comparison to show between starting strikers in some teams in 2006 and in 2024 (the difference is INSANE) Arsenal : Henry/Havertz (or Jesus) Chelsea : Drogba/Jackson Liverpool : Crouch/Nunez (maybe an improvement) United : Van Nistelrooy/Hojlund Real Madrid : Ronaldo/? (no real striker outside of Joselu) Barcelone : Eto'o/35yo Lewandowski Atlético : Torres/Morata Milan : Shevchenko/37yo Giroud Inter : Adriano/Martinez Juventus : Ibrahimovic or Trezeguet/Vlahovic Bayern : Makaay/Kane (improvement)
@@SWOTHDRA as a German in the early 00's Makaay was the #1 name you'd hear every week when it came to awesome goals. Though Kane is probably the best in the entire op 2024 lineup
I absolutely do think it has gotten worse, but mostly because of just how much more money has entered the sport. That period of the mid-00s onwards has absolutely hurt the sport, where a number of things came all together. Investors entering the sport at roughly the same time as both Messi and Ronaldo emerging did a ton of damage in my opinion - prices inflated like crazy while everyone was on the hunt for the next Messi/Ronaldo. And then it stayed at that level before increasing again, which ultimately either priced out certain clubs that were doing decently well before, or forced them into unreliable gambles on the transfer market that ended up badly just to keep up. I hate it, to be honest.
Never thought the person who made the upload of "Unavoidable Battle" I have been listening to for at the very least 8 years would be in one of Alfie's videos. I agree btw
@@tougedrift Once in a while, I do peek in and leave a comment here, especially considering how long the sport has been a part of my life, haha. Usually when it relates to the Bundesliga or a German player in some shape or form (as a Werder Bremen fan, I really have been feeling that part of being priced out and then forced into risky gambles on the transfer market, as the early 10s have shown. I miss the years during which we got great players like Micoud for dirt cheap...).
@@Collisco7 yeah. you get more and more clubs which just throw cash at problems, so everyone realizes they can demand more. Can just take a look at Chelsea under Boehly as a prime example and the prices they paid for players lol
@@segafreak2000When you said teams who gamble on transfers and end up falling away I immediately thought about Werder Bremen and in your next comment you say you are a Werder fan. Hope Werder can return where it belongs. Micoud,Diego,Ailton,Klose…just wow! Miss when “my” Bayern had Werder as they’re biggest rival and Thomas Schaaf on the bench. So many great memories come across.
Great video! With everything you said, im very certain that ancelotti is the best manager nowadays. In many interviews he said he doesnt like to restrict his players, even when we talk about their personality. He always backs them up, and encourages them to be theirselfs, even if the whole spanish media is against them.
There is more objective data about how football has gone worse. 1- Free kicks. In the 90s every club in Brazil had a decent free kick taker and there were multiple great free kick takers: rogerio ceni, juninho pernambucano, marcelinho carioca, Marcos Assunção. I didnt watch much soccer when I was a kick, but despite of that I have many memories of goals being scored from free kicks from close and from very far. Check Renato from flamengo. Not ant sort of genius, but scored many goals like that. Goals direct from corner kicks also happened, much more rarely but it did. I was ched some of them. Take dribbling the goalie. When growing up I saw multiple strikers dribbling the goalie, not only Ronaldo Nazario, also Bebeto, Romario, Zico, and many others less know. It was expected from a top player. Recently Vinicius Jr has been dribbling goalies but it seems more of a speed and strength feat and less of a natural technical achievement. One more. Great players frequently were very capable of passing and scoring with both legs. Zico did. Ronaldo Nazario did. Just like Neymar did more recently. Adriano was criticized because at his level he should be able to play better with his right foot. Nowadays Brazil varely has a player vapable of using a single lega to score. The biggest mistake nowadays is believing that technology can do more than it actually can. When comes to player's ability and technical development, practice with a ball is still #1 by far... Nowadays not only there is much more distractions and options than kids had growing up in the past but many training camp waste youth players with excessive strategy and positioning. Cheers 🥂
I used to watch teams I didn't follow because of how good the players were 20 years ago. Nowadays I'm not even bothered with the Champions League final. Sure it may be nostalgia, but it's mainly because of how average the players have become. I'm talking about forwards who could shoot better, DMs who could hold the ball, attacking midfielders who could pass, central defenders who were crazy consistent and wingbacks who could pass. The current generation is crazy inconsistent. Early 2000s were a special generation and acknowledging that doesn't make you all nostalgic. Look at how rare it is nowadays for teams to fight over a player and fans to wish they played for their team instead
But Guardiola also coached the most entertaining player in the world, Messi, which showed great individual skills. Xavi and Iniesta were also fun to watch. Maybe that was just coincidence or the beginning of his career.
@@adriant240 Yeah Pep carried the style everywhere with him, that Barca team were unreal and could move the ball fast, dribble and make killer passes. Pep went to Munich and tried that inverted full back crap with Lahm and it failed, Real hammered them in the CL, Pep never won the CL with a Bayern team that won the treble the year before with Jupp Heynckes. How many years did it take Pep to win the CL with City? like 8 years and spending a fortune. Pep and Arteta etc are boring managers that just want sideways and back passing.
@@alanchamberlain9902 Jurgen Klopp is the last hope of managers giving freedom to their players and watching something exciting... Klopp really understands football and it's essence... he doesn't want robots, he wants players who will succeed and fail with their own idea... you could see Salah and Mane go all over the pitch and try crazy dribbles and runs that were really inventive and Klopp was good with that... but Guardiola and the Guardiola-madness has ruined football... pass pass pass pass 50 times in a row... who gives a fuck Pep??? Nobody... also you're a fucking failure cause you spent 2 billion pounds on players to win one champions league trophy... well, hooray... what an achievement... Everyone says Rodri is a brilliant DMF... all I see is a scared DMF to make a single risky pass... Busquets was a brilliant DMF, not Rodri... Pirlo was a brilliant DMF... Lothar Matheus was a brilliant DMF... watching Rodri play football is like eating chicken without seasoning... also Guardiola sucks every ounce of confidence out of his players... none of them has the confidence to try anything inventive cause he will be subbed out immediately... Pep has a huge idea of himself but in reality he's the worst thing that ever happened to football... the guy who subbed THIERY FUCKING HENRY for scoring a goal he didn't like and dropped RONALDINHO cause he didn't care to make boring midfield passes for 20 mins straight...
@@gabrielmagalhaes859 Neymar? Messi is more entertaining than Neymar. As for Ronaldinho, yeah you could argue. But Messi's dribble and passing are like nobody else's.
Short answer. Yes. Pep Guardiola ruined football. There are no shot stoppers, no-nonsense defenders or actual forwards now. There are just athletes who know to pass the ball till the end of eternity on both ends of the pitch in every team.
Absolute 100% facts. The sport has become too mechanical and has kicked out naturalness & soul in the name of stats, probability, and mechanisms. If this football today was the football we grew up watching, we’d have never fallen in love with the sport.
Ye but when players don't play like fucking robots people complain bcuz football fans forget its a fucking game its meant to be entertaining at the end if the day winning shouldn't matter (to a certain extent)
Pep and his anti football is what's been wrong since the last 2000s. Effective but dull as hell. All the coaches copying him now, it's a painful sport to watch.
Been saying this for ages. Back in 2004 Czech Republic had Nedved. Who was unreal.. My point being that yes the big international teams was full of legends.. But even in the countries which weren't as competitive, they still had people like Nedved. Modric at Croatia is a recent example. Suarez for Uruguay. Portugal were crying out for the flair of Figo this summer. I vividly remember football being a lot more competitive being younger. Now it's all passing and some glorified dragged out tactical bore. Hence why I watch old football now.
Definitely not only nostalgia. I see a lot of similarities between football and poker in that sense. When i started following the latter in the early 2000s, the game was full of colorful characters and you had the "online kids" with their creative bluffing ways. With the rise of sharing of information online the game has now basically been solved. Elite players no longer think in ways like "does he have it or not?" but play game theory optimal. No table chatter, just a bunch of robots sitting dead still not to give away any body languge. When some sports and games are perfected they simply, for many, lose some of their entertainment value from a poetic/romantic point of view. But miles better, no question
Update. It's EURO 2024 and so called "modern stars" are not capable of crossing, passing, shooting, dribbling and on top of that lack the passion to win. I think fans are slowly waking up and not buying this narrative that the reason these players are not performing good is because football has improved so much. It's propaganda pushed by UEFA because those players are their milk cows and with how depressing and terrible modern players are they have to push this propaganda to sell the tickets. A team like Portugal with only 7% crossing accuracy in the quarter finals is a stat that can't be justified. They DON'T KNOW how to cross. I would pull the numbers for sucessful passes but those numbers are going to be flawed because all they do is pass back or pass to the nearest teammate. They are INCAPABLE of sending through balls or lobbed passes. First touches are so bad that balls are straight up bouncing off of the players like they are amateurs. There is another interesting statistic is that we have reached semi finals and no one has scored a single free kick. Current top scorer is Gapko with 3 goals I don't have to talk about dribbling because we can all see that no one is dribbling this tournament or should I say no one is capable of beating their defenders. Seeing Pepe, a 42 year old with more red cards than most of the younger players appearances and still bullying them further proves my point how overrated they are. "But but the pace of the game is faster now... players are running a lot more" Yes. It is easy to run a lot more now that they can constantly take breathers every few minutes due to constant diving, faking injuries, VAR checks, whining & ganging up on the ref and wasting time and now they introduced water breaks too. Imagine how good Maradona would have been if he was protected as current players and if players were allowed to whine and dive so much to take a breather? He was already running around like a cokehead imagine how much energy he would have in modern soft football.
When I was a kid in the 90's/ 00's I absolutely loved football. There were so many characters and such a wide range of top footballers with unique play styles/ identities. However now when I watch football it just seems bloated, over analysed, over thought and boring quite frankly. To me most modern footballers are just clones of each other and everything is so tactically efficient its actually taken some of the chaos and soul out of the game. I've always felt for a while and said to a people a few times that my generation had the best time for football.
My issue with modern football is more and more team try to play the same way, possession, attacking, pressing. It is a great style that all the successful teams use, but 20 years ago there actually was a variety of styles and philosophies. National and club teams played with distinct identities and personalities. Like how Mourinho’s tactics contrasted sharply with Wenger; SAF and Ancelotti are both man-manager, but one is strict while the other is chill. Nowadays everyone is drilled in the same way on the field, also all the PR and social media concerns kind of neutered the individual personalities, when are we going to get another Vieira vs. Keane style of clash of strong leaders?
"Thirty years ago players went out with the fullest license to display their arts and crafts. Today they have to make their contributions to a system. Individuality has to be sublimated to teamwork." Herbert Chapman 1932. The same nonsense has been endlessly regurgitated for at least ninety years.
Watch Quang Hải - you will be amazed He is one of the few, top class, hyperexpressive ballers in the game - putting his art on the pitch against all top players from Asia and other teams for 8 years and counting. He is the reason why I watch Vietnamese football. Football is not just Premier League
For a long time I also have been thinking that 2006 WC was the peak of football in my lifetime but I never actually wondered why. This video sums it up pretty nicely.
It is a very good question. As a so called "lesser club" supporter, I am lucky that I won't fall into the fanboy trap when it comes to club players at international level. Although I will say even if he did leave in the Summer, James Ward-Prowse should be on that plane ahead of Henderson. The only players I see in the current England set up that would get in to the Golden Generation are Bellingham and Kane. I don't see a John Terry or Steven Gerrard in this current crop. That could be nostalgia talking - I'm 35 and I'm old before my time so it's possible - but when I think about it, managers like Guardiola and Klopp (English league bias to be sure) have very much made modern football about team tactics over individual brilliance. It would explain why the flair players like Grealish and Barkley have at times struggled.
IMO the period between 07 and 15 was peak football simply because it wasn't either tactics-driven or individual brilliance, it was both. It should be both managers coaching players to efficiently do their job but also understand that those players are human beings...
@@ricaard6959When Pep went full system mode it killed the need for specialist players. Even deadball specialist since he's always gonna favour the short pass. So 😴
@@ricaard6959this stuff makes me believe in the bibles end time prophecy 😂 the 07-15 era was so unbelievably blessed that we experienced the best before nwo comes in. See the super league prequel in the new champions league format.
One thing I can be thankful for is ill never forget seeing Ronaldinho in that Barca/Brazil as a young kid and being mesmorized, Ronaldo in that United shirt and Drogba in that Chelsea shirt. Classic Prem was peak.
I am a 2010s dude but when my dad showed me football from 1990s and 2000s, I got more excitement from watching a 2005 UCL final than the 2023 final Also I downloaded Retro Football Manager so that I can at least manage them
EDIT: Wait, today is April 1st?! Goddammit Alfie!!! I don't think it's the footballers and the actual sport itself that has gotten worse. If anything, the beautiful game is still well.......beautiful. And recent competitions proved that. What got worse is the stuff that happens OFF the field. Everything from the fans to the FIFA governing body to countries trying to use the game to "sportswash" and worst of all, money money MONEY!!! I think everyone is just getting more cynical now because all these stuff feels more on the nose lately and it can suck the fun out of enjoying the sport.
"People bringing in politics" eh? Just to remind you, people's existence (and persecution for existing) isn't politics- it's something that has been *politicised* for the sake of attempting to suppress the fact. ;)
Bringing in politics into football has happened for as long as you can think though, lol. It's not a recent thing at all. Why do you think one of the very first world cups went to Italy, for example? Or why Argentina or Spain were allowed to hold one despite dictatorship circumstances in both of these countries at the time (though by the time it happened in Spain, that one had fallen already, more that there was one when they were picked).
@@alexisauld7781 Not THAT kind of "politics". I'm talking about local and global governance, that kind of politics. What you're talking about is common human decency, which I think shouldn't even need to be debated about whether people of different backgrounds should be allowed to be left alone and be comfortable with who they are. I'm talking about politics like how Saudi is trying to "sports wash" it's contentious history by hosting the World Cup and pretending to be a fully civilized nation.
The old school approach is returning with some coaches like Inzaghi and Thiago Motta. They play a beautiful brand of football. I spend my entire Saturdays watching football from all leagues, but I've never found myself watching City under Pep out of my own free will if it's not a Champions League KO tie.
it definitely got worse. every 2nd manager wants to be pep guardiola and wants to defend with the ball. Its killing the passion out the football. Not many teams like Atalanta for example where they play fast and attacking football that we all loved and enjoyed watching.
Part of it is that in 2006 many of the named stars in the intro were young stars and promises that actually lived up to their hype/expectations. In the following world cups there has been promising players who didn’t fully live up to their hype in their career such has James Rodriguez in the 2014 WC
Right. You never see young stars really making it anymore. It’s always a player who was in the shadows till he was 21-23 years old who comes onto the scene and is now the best.
@@APsGTGMbappe, Bellingham, Wirtz, etc. The problem is you don't know which young players will succeed until they already have. There are good young players now who might fizzle out, and others who will live up to expectations, but we don't know who yet.
Best German players in the premier league of all time. (Day 619) I will not give up until the video is made or Alfie himself tells me to stop. Everyone else telling me that will be ignored. If you don't believe my number, just go back to the previous videos. I'm at the bottom most of the time, but I'm there.
It’s not just that we have worse and less entertaining football but also boring tactics and footballers full of fear and that are too afraid to act out on instinct and be who they are. They are now the image of the club instead of the footballer who plays for the club. Absolutely abysmal, and people(online) dislike and thrash individualist in any team all the time. They think in stats and numbers which is embarrassing.
6:56 you can't really compare players from such diffreent eras in numbers of goals and assists. Players at Maradona's time had much less comletitive matches, both at club level as in national teams. For example Messi had more than double the amount of caps as Maradona, mainly because there are much more internationals now than back then.
The really spectacular aspects of the game are becoming more and more rare as every team prioritises possession football and maximising xG. P.S. xG being a statistic that people care about is the worst thing to ever happen to football
@@RaiyanReetom I didn't say the stat was the problem, I said the obsession over it was. Just look at the ridiculous nonsense Poch said last week that Chelsea should be 4th because of the statistics. They are 4th on xG but every other stat has them at mid table or worse, it's weapons grade nonsense. To quote Bill Russell: “The only important statistic is the final score.”
In short words, Pep and his disciples (Artetas, Kompanys of these world ) are the one who are destroying football. That's why Klopp leaving the PL is one of the biggest PL loses.
money corrupting leagues, diving becoming common place - slowing down games and making for boring plays, VAR pulling goals that would’ve otherwise stood years past. I’m not even sure if there are any ways to fix these issues.
unfortunately football is becoming just another side of immediate profit over everything else, this is not just football of course and basically the direction we as humanity have chosen to become complacent. amazing video btw.
In Portugal there was lot of talks about our youth academies lately turning players into robots and losing the creativity (street soccer like) our players used to have and it seems they been changing it a bit to allow more creativity again and make winning at young age less important than developing the player.
Yes. Ruined by money. I mean lots of it. The game has been priced out of the regular Joe's with only questionable nations and uber wealthy 0.001% of the world able to be genuinely successful.
People got realize these systemic approaches these mangers are taking are just more effective to win games instead of the constant unnecessary flair football some players play without being effective while playing that style.
This. Modern football requires that all players fullfill their role in the system at all times, or your team will lose because of your mistakes. Everyone is good at transitions, so ironing out mistakes is so, so important.
'A business of football compared to a game of football' simple as that. Even the design change of a jersey every season becomes environmental unfriendly and the competition of the designs leads to far poorer outlook but more expensive. Rich teams get richer, poor teams get poorer and no future growth for small teams despite money in the pool gets larger and larger.
We all miss just watching football on tv. MOTD, TH-cam, FA cup. I can’t afford subscription. Football is for the lucky few now. Just give us some more. What harm would it do?
The fitness levels now is insane now but it has turned into game of running and standing in the right place rather than individual brilliance which has made it boring
It has, used to be too hard to score, now it's the opposite - PL is having record averages, CL is frequently above 3 goals a game after rarely touching that before, it's a bunch of tap-ins and howlers
Not a surprise, in the eighties and nineties italian defensive football ruled and brutal tackles were allowed…every team had a butcher…that had an impact on the score😂
@@donaldvanvliet9039 Yeah that's the other extreme, Serie A was so defensive that goals per game dipped under 2, which is insane and lower than any WC ever for context. 2.5-2.8 has been the standard
there's a pretty simple answer to this debate - the white collar managerialism that's completely overtaken football (at least the top tiers). i (very regrettably) work in the IT industry, and while people are smarter, tech is better, code's a lot more foolproof than when we were kids, there's no passion. hell, i used to be only vaguely interested in it and now find myself working here only because of the $$$. it's almost the same in football. you have the big 4 (at best, looking at you france) of each country, just like the big 4 in tech (and their analogues in the other countries), and eeeeeveryone else trying to find an angel investment through competing in the top (investment)tiers. the players, like the IT professionals leaving for the US, leave for the top 5 leagues for a paycheck, and spend more of their lives as immigrants than they do at home. and the style of play? man, watching burnley play pep-ball is like asking me to configure and deploy an application, i'm mediocre at best, and even that's an exaggeration, but for the money? i can pretend i'm up there 😂
The aggression has gone, like how the players used to be so aggressive towards referee, now we have female referees in men's sports, can't be aggressive towards them or you're apparently EVIL.
I personally just love the 70s football, putting on the 1970 world cup semifinal and watch Siggi Held Out of nowhere dribble past four defenders like he is literally Messi and then do a cross that is so bad it looks like he never did a cross before. That is what I associate most with old football, players who are in their strong case world class in every standard but in parts of the game they are not too familiar are like literal amateurs
I think, Messi and Ronaldo set the bar too high by dominating. That’s why people don’t see as many stars in future world cups compared to 2006 World Cup.
Messi and Ronaldo pretty much failed both in almost all their Worl Cup attempts. Even in 2022 Messi only scored because he was given 5 weak penalties lmao
Football just became too technical. The best example for this is if you compare Haaland and Mbappe the two best strikers now to Cr7 and Messi, they might score as many or even more goals then these two legends but i always got that feeling that something is missing and it doesnt matter how many goals they score they will never achive such legendary status. They dont have nothing individually special about them. Or even better example an El clasico, in my opinion it doesnt feel special anymore, its just another game to get through, its probably because these young players doesnt have the same passion for their team as the old ones like Puyol or Ramos.
Releasing this the day after that utter snooze fest between city and arsenal is great timing
😂😂😂😂
Personally I thought they still looked like the two best teams in the league
169th like :)
@@solarmaru49 the two best teams in the league w/ their attackers having an off day. Defenders was still great tho.
@@Lilleh__ 8 CBs and 4 DMs were on the field at the same time 😭😭😭
VAR being scapegoated is ironic. It just exposed how bad the referees are. Back then, there was so many bad calls and the same people who used to cry about those decisions will be the same ones who hate VAR. Refereeing needs a huge overhaul.
VAR started when both Messi and Ronaldo were on the edge of their prime, thing is, all of Barca and Real UCL wins, also copa america being like every 3 months and WC 2022 in Qatar, all of that was a clear push for the biggest stars to get their trophies. every year there is some match that is questionable referee calls...
@@ST-tf4sqyeah..copa America every 3 month..sure mate.. keep on being salty
I would say players have become better tactically and become efficient , however the reason why people think old is better than new because of How open ended games used to be, now most games are very tactical and cagey
As someone watching both regional and top flight football i can say you this:
No. VAR makes the game worse.
You also can accept a bad call way better when there isnt a second referee using 5 minutes of our time and modern technology withseveral replays and angles and still make a bad call.
The fact that people stay quite after a goal when there is even the slightest chance of something, somewhere, maybe, possibly wrong 5 minutes earlier is a death sentence.
Either copy it from the sports that know how to do it (eg everyone else), including imposing a strict timelimit and assess the quality of refereeing or let it be. But since football officials are unable to not want to reinvent the wheel our best shot is getting rid of it.
@@LiftandCoaAccepting a bad call better without VAR? Nearly 38 years and Peter Shilton still can't accept a bad call without VAR...
So you haven’t gone with the idea of making an all time bald XI? You’ve made an enemy of me Alfie Potts Harmer.
Lmfao!!😂😂😂
Alfie of 2020 would've made one
@@waffle.supplyno longer the peoples channel
Only if he does all time long hair XI
Zidane, Charlton, Leboeuf, Robben, Stam, Gravesen, Kompany, Vially, Cambiasso, Zabaleta. Goalkeeper: Barthez Referee and most bald of all: Collina
Football has suffered from death by over analysis.
All players now have chest monitors which record distance travelled, average position, heart rate etc.
So managers are able to control where players are by giving feedback based on real data.
Everything is too formulaic.
Skillful players are no longer allowed to just "go out and play".
Messi notices it when his son played. Dude, actually felt bad for future footballer.
It's a boring sport. Make the goals bigger.
sounds like f1 lol
@@Mike-rm1lband make the pitch smaller
@@BodybuildingSteve You know, i was watching these because i am a fan of the theory, everihting as it becomes big, money and mainstream becomes bigger and eventualy fail, and was watching these and not long ago an F1 channel and honestly it sounds the same, F1 in the past cars were small, agile, no limits in tire, no limites in pit stops or re fueling, allowing small teams compete, and strategi tactics but in order to prevent death, wich i agree is sad, and bad but killing the sport in a sport wich any one that enters know you are risking your life, i mean F1 now is boring, no overtakes no competition, and every rule supposly to make more competition, make it less, football, i remember a friend, or ex friend talk me football before, was a party, was fun, yes people behave and you watch the matches, shoots from long distances and more things happen than plans, and when you watch it now, i was never a football fan but now, in the past athlete run and play the 90 minutes was a sport, now is boring and in very few feel fun, i am not a fan of footbal and only some intrest in F1, but both look to be fun in the past and look boring now
Watching clips of Ronaldinho having fun on the pitch, and then he smiles and points at the crowd. I almost started crying. What joy it was.
But..but.. we have Raphael Leao now!! He smiles when he plays!! Except that he is not even a 2% of player that Ronaldinho was hahaha. Raphael "Retarded Joga Bonito" Leao
Because you were drinking
I was just dreaming - to break the systematic / robotic football of the present day, would it not be nice to amend the rules such that each team could only play at most 9 players (including the keeper) on the defensive half?
Ronaldinho used to get in at 6 from the club after hitting the gear the whole night. Then he showed up at the Camp Nou 10 hours later and bamboozled defenders. Game’s gone.
Those 2006 squads... damn.
CRAZY TIMES. mid table teams would clap your cheeks if you were caught lacking 😂.
Slower, less fit, less developed than current generation.
most of those players would struggle against mid table teams in the prem today
@@lenneth1188 Just to make clear, I meant the international squads at the 2006 World Cup.
@@lenneth1188goid joke
Are we still saying that Cantona's press conference wasn't an obvious dig at the reporters, who all joined together to pretend to be stupid rather than understand.
I genuinely think the English press back then were just that stupid
Yeah, that conference statement sounded very clear
Excuse me? Then tell me what it was they understood that I don't if you think you know what he was saying.
The idea is that the press reporters are seagulls waiting for him to throw them metaphorical sardines, which he wasnt going to do. It's hard to know if that was intentional, but it makes sense.
There is an irony in that his seagull speech was a massive news story though. @@TheEyeball37
Watching city win things is about as satisfying and authentic as watching a computer winning a chess match. Soulless and boring. That's not even counting the off field stuff.
Football certainly feels less fun than it did 10-15 years ago. The days of watching Ronaldinho tearing up the pitch and pulling off audacious skills and tricks in matches have long gone.
Now that the money has gotten silly in the game and that VAR has now become a cliche of a talking point, it feels like we arnt actually talking about football anymore but the circumstances in which the game is played. Money, transfers and VAR have become a distraction to how we watch football now
I mean he was the greatest
Well, now Ronaldinho has overshadowed his football career in retirement after trying to circumvent a travel ban (his Spanish and Brazilian passports were confiscated for tax offences) by travelling with a fake Paraguayan passport to Paraguay. He sat 5 months in prison and house arrest for it, and IMO should have been convicted for it. But I guess "Rules for thee but not for me" does work because he was allowed to leave Paraguay completely unscathed. And THAT is not an April Fools Joke.
@@bundesautobahn7Blud NOBODY thinks about his controversies before his actual quality 😐
Sorry mate but we have to go back 20 years to see Ronaldinho still in his prime. 15 years ago was 2009 😱
Who talks about the circumstances football is played in. People who are passionate about football still talk about the football games somewhat. Money and tranfers should not distract you between football game, when that would be weird, if it did distract you.😂
1) football has gone crap
2) Stop gaslighting people into believing Cantona’s statement was incomprehensible. It made perfect sense. The seagulls following the trawler represented the media waiting for a tag line and ironically he was right because bizarre is the word they always attach to it.
Exactly, it was the media who tried making out it didn't make sense because they didn't want to admit he'd successfully mugged them off
Exactly I didn’t get it at first but then I watched it with context and it was perfectly clear what he meant. He made it sound incoherent on purpose. They always tried to make him look like a fool and he was many things but a fool was not one of them.
Those 2006 squads, almost half the players of every top 10 nation are close to legends now 🤣 crazy times
LMAO. That is because in 2006 you were young !! In 1986 the teams were full of legends as well.
For example Denmark : Sören Lerby (Ajax, Bayern, PSV EC1), Morten Olsen (Anderlecht Uefa cup 1983), Ivan Nielsen (PSV 1988 EC1), Jan Mölby (LFC), Michael Laudrup (Juve, Barcelona dream team, Real, Ajax), Frank Arnesen (Ajax, Valencia, PSV, EC1), Jesper Olsen (Ajax, ManU), Preben Elkjaer (FC Köln & Hellas Verona champions, #2 at Ballon d'Or ), Allan Simonsens (Ballon d'Or 1977 ! Borussia MG, EC1 final, 2x Uefa cup, , Barcelon EC2) ...... These are 80s and 1992 Legends !
But you were too young/not born yet to remember them !
Another reason : Before 2000 (or better before 2005, when youtube started) is not so much footage available, to see how good players are. 'Seeing is Memory' !
Furthermore since 1993 with the Champions League, and more so since 1996 with the Bosman case, when footballers could play all over Europe and when there was more room for non-European players, you would see all 'the legendary players' in one league. 'Legend' means for you: 'has played for years in the Champions League ' !
Before the Bosman arrest all those Portuguease players would play in Portugal, so you would hardly know them.
And the great 70s/80s team of Poland and the 86/88 stars of Soviet-Union/Dinamo Kiev had too difficult names to remember anyway !
@@lws7394 my point is that, compared to lets say the 2010’s or even the 2020’s now, these teams had some crazy squads. Of course there’s been plenty of talent in recent times and plenty of future legends, but man a lot squads back then were STACKED compared to now.
@@lws7394
Not sure if you're Danish or you dont know about football, but those are not legends.
@@lws7394yeah 2006 was good I don’t know about the shit players in the 1900s
@@LargeLarg3y’all guys can’t understand that for something to be called legendary there’s most be some time aging for it possible. I mean yal talking about 90’s and 00’s when we had the greatest rivality in football in our time plus some many leggends that are retiring now or next year. Don’t know what you’ll say about our era in the next 20 years and trust me the ones coming up now are nothing less.
Football has probably improved in terms of quality but has gone down the shitter in terms of being a spectacle
Maybe in terms of athletic ability and tactical efficiency. Which means modern teams would most likely beat teams from back then.
But football is meant to be a spectator sport so it has gone down in quality.
the average player is more talented, but the top players not so much.
Is it just me or we barely see any free kick or longe range goals nowdays, while before those were regular?
@@stefan5730 Juninho 🙌🙌. Now that guy was gifted.
I think individual talent, Passion and fighting spirit has decreased in today's football, but tactically today's football is better
It's boring to watch now. Players are too scared to try and make something happen because it goes against the Managers gameplan
@261i7 it's not. My point is it used to be a lot better
@261i7 there used to be a bigger element of chance in games and attackers used to be more exciting
Exactly 👍👍 now every football game have a pattern ,passing and passing and passing,like nobody can shoot outside of penalty area. It became so boring to watch.
I think there is something else too. Physically, the players are much better than they used to be. There is just no space to be found on the pitch. Pressing and closing down tactics have also improved. So we see 90 minutes of players desperately trying to find a bit of space. At this point, I think the only solution is playing 10 v 10 or 9 v 9 or making the pitch (and probably the goals) significantly larger.
@MusicalTranscendence there's only a few teams that press non stop in the whole of Europe.
What are you talking about it?
Football has lost its soul, meaning the unpredictability in it.
There were always teams that played possession type of football, even in the 70's.
Now it's so boring, beyond belief.
I think that the players in the past had more "specialized" traits and characters that gave you some sort of feeling that you can attach them with. Vidic, Edgar Davids, Gattuso, Roy Keane, Pirlo, Beckham, Zidane, Ronaldinho, Inzaghi, Crouch. All very different players with special traits and trademarks. Players nowadays have a more well rounded game which can makes them feel less "special" and unique. That could be a reason why the game seems more boring.
More like back then squads coaches gave their players more freedom to do what they wanted compared to today where you can't do what u want
Its the age of the internet, their are no secrets. In the past you needed to find someone that spent their days studying cwrtain tactics and revealing strategies. Nowadays their are no secrets so you cant get away with w6you could in the past. Just how all industries have affected, look at music. Everyone sounds the same, in my youth we had so many different sounding rappers and artists it was amazing
Agreed but i would put Edgar Davids out of that list tho, as he was a kinda well rounded player, probably one of the most well rounded of his generation. It's true that he was mostly known for his aggressive defense but he also got skills (unlike Gattuso). He gave the best as a cm but he also used to play winger early in his career, he was a good dribbler , could carry the ball up the field and had a deadly long shot too.
It’s rare to have real dribblers now. I can only think of Mitoma. And he uses his pace a lot, rather than feints.
Very well put
Robben said that had he been trained at a team like ajax, he wouldnt have become the player he was.
They have a system and all r drilled into it, meaning robbens way of playing wouldve been drilled out of him.
Players now r better athletes, more technically sound and understand tactics better, though i think thats just due to when they were born and not cuz they r actually better.
However, most players now grow up in a system or have coaches who dont allow for individuality to shine through cuz well, the system is the most important part.
Its why we dont see as many long range goals anymore, cuz statistically speaking, those r not as good a shot as one inside the box. Ive heard stories of youth team coaches (and pro coaches) giving their players shit for scoring from outside during training cuz its not "a good shot".
Ribery said once that during a game, guardiola kept shouting what to do at him and he thought "damn, just let me play the game".
Of course guardiola is a top coach, but that just shows the point of "system above everything else".
Je ne suis pas d'accord, la qualité technique de footballeurs à baisser.
The hype leading up to the 06 World Cup was incredible. The Joga Bonito campaign with Cantona and the Brazil team… everything was just hype.
I miss the old Brazil
Yeah and Brazil hasn’t won in what will be 24-25 years by next WC. All that hype and posturing only to get smoked….that’s really what lead to the shift
@@maseratimitch2024 Brazil didn't get "smoked", you clown; it was just 1-0 to France (the finalists!) in the quarter finals. Bet you love an embellishment
don't forget the Brazilian hype in 2002. in Germany there was more Brazil than German merch at the shops all over
The trend towards ever increasing efficiency in football reminds me oddly of the popularity of Backgammon. It’s been around for millennia but backgammon became really popular for gambling in the 1960s and 70s because they added a ‘doubling cube’ which meant either player could double the amount of money they were playing for at any time and the other player either has to accept the new stakes or concede the game. This made it incredibly popular in high stakes culture because any game was a few doubles away from being contested for outrageous amounts of money. There were huge world championship tournaments held in luxury resorts in the Caribbean with massive prize money, it’s also why it appears in the James Bond film Octopussy in 1983. What ended up killing backgammon though is once these tournaments started having huge financial incentives people took the time to create backgammon strategies that gave you the best statistical likelihood of winning. The games became predictable and formulaic and as these new strategist dominated, the loss of the unpredictability that brought it to prominence made the super independently wealthy fans lose interest. In turn the money being pumped into the tournaments dried up and so even the strategists left because it wasn’t a viable money making game anymore and now there is basically no such thing as a high stakes backgammon scene and there probably won’t be ever again. All that’s to say if football really is becoming more boring because of increasing efficiency, if it becomes a ‘solved’ game where we know what the best way to achieve success tactically will that drive fans away? And if it will how do you fix it or return to a more entertaining product?
Backgammon was not on my bingo card of anticipated responses. Kudos to you good sir.
@@lesbo37 if Alfie made a video about high-stakes backgammon it would be AMAZING! Brilliant comment by the op!
This is what's happening to baseball now its been effiencied down to the 3 true outcomes of walk strikeout or home run. It sucks but you can't really help modern analytics.
@@corbing7786 Juiced balls and perfectly groomed fields have a lot to do with that
The 3 outcomes becomes less viable if the home runs become long fly balls and bunts and slow grounders become an adventure to field
Very interesting to read, my only hope is that while we feel close to a solved game of fitness and positional play, there will still be tactical geniuses waiting in the wings ready to reinvent peak football.
Do we still not understand what Cantona was talking about in that interview!
As a man that's seen Gladiator many times, I look back and take Cantona to simply mean "Are you not entertained?"
The media followed him and hounded him for years, waiting for his customary moment of madness to arrive. It arrived. Why is everyone so shocked?
It's pretty obvious that Cantona is the trawler and the media are the seagulls. My interpretation was always that it was Cantona's way of saying, "You're only here to try and goad me into another controversy. I'm not going to give you that satisfaction. Goodbye."
“Nobody would suggest that Man city and Pep are getting the best out of Guardiola” got me laughing so hard.
Name's Guardiola. Jack Guardiola. 🤣🤣🤣🤣 14:06
Came to comment this myself. Had to run it back because I thought I was tripping. 🤣
Guardiola at Villa Park 💀💀💀
i just heard that and lost it 😂😂
You will probably see this video in 1-4 weeks now lol good stuff
Jack Guardiola 😅
I used to watch 70~80 matches per season. now i dont even watch 10.
I used to watch 10 per season. Now I watch 0.
Can't remember the last time I watched a full 90min game
@@flacohernandez4380I watch a full 90 once a month my team is a shadow of its former self
Football has become pretty boring.
They’ve been saying it for decades but money really has ruined football.
Every player is a robot nowadays.
Very rarely does something spectacular happen. Just teams passing it about 30 yards out until they lose the ball.
Man City’s centre backs are just there to stop counter attacks. They do most of their defending on the halfway line.
Bland domination.
I miss players who just took a shot on whenever they could. You don’t get players like Bergkamp or Berbatov these days. Guys who thought outside the box and did the unexpected, Cantona, even
Tony Yeboah.
Nobody breaks the mould nowadays.
Football is harder nowadays and has more entertainment. Just appreciate your time. We have Vinicuis, Mbappe, Haaland, Musiala, Foden, De jong and many more great footballers nowadays. Your problem is that you are stuck in the past. I do agree that money and VAR has ruined football at some percentage but there are so many good things that have improved in modern day football and It might be overlooked.
@@Agonyam What has become better? Care to name a few things? Serious question
@@milanvranjesevic4789sports science is the only thing I can think of
@@Agonyamvar hasn't ruined football. It was needed. The refs that they use in the premier League is what ruin it. Either incompetent or crooked
@@milanvranjesevic4789 Marketing, entertainment, team conditions, excitement of the game and there are many young stars or great talents now who are: Mbappe, Foden, Haaland, Vinicius, Rodrigo, Musiala, Guler, Yamal, Garnacho, Mainoo, Bellingham, Emdrick and more.
It has become very robotic, systematic. Individual brilliance is not cultivated. Any expression of excellent ball control and skill is criticized as showboating and deemed unnecessary even though it's what i like the most about football. When you get dirty tackled as a result they dont always penalize the offense, as if condoning the act as punishment for having great flair.
Lots of things going on.
When Neymar got booked a few years ago for doing skills perfectly illustrates what just said here
I do not really agree. Skills need to be effective. Ronaldinho for example was showing off while being effective and its the greatest thing I've ever seen! Richarlison and Anthony do skills for the sake of skills and it's only right to critique it.
The club conditions are way better. You don't wanna live 50 years in the past. The condition nowadays are super healthy were there is a lot of hardwork. Cruyff used to smoke and was still good why? Because the club conditions we'rent class at the time and he wouldn't be as great in modern day football.
Marko van Basten had a rant recently before Romania but after the lackluster pool phase. Said, that our footballers nowadays don't come from the street anymore, they're academy players who are told what to do and they have no identify or creativity to solve stuff themselves (attacking and defence) if the system doesn't work.
He said he himself even used to communicate a lot with the defenders like baresi maldini how to get the ball upfront the best, and fastest also in-match in dressing room...they solved stuff themselves if the system wasn't working.
Nowadays everyone waiting for instructions..and if the system isn't functioning theres disconnect between the players
@@dco1019 Spot on 👍
It’s quite interesting how much regard Pep has for a coach like Bielsa if you view their styles as differing between creating or controlling the levels of chaos within the game. Bielsa’s Leeds at their best in the premier league were basically chaos machines sometimes turning games in to farces and yet Guardiola has never ending praise for Bielsa. I think this just goes to show even the bald fraud despises the monster he has helped create.
Bielsa favors high-pressing, short-passing possession-based teams playing out of a fluid 3-4-3 or 4-3-3 formation. His training is high-intensity repetition of basic situations, such that no situation faced in a game will be entirely novel, allowing players to improvise within a fixed system.
This is essentially an extension of the Michels-Cruyff system from Ajax and Barcelona (though Bielsa developed it from Argentine sources). It surprises me not one bit that Guardiola esteems him so. Other followers of Bielsa: Mauricio Pocchetino, Jorge Sampaoli, Tata Martinez, and Diego Simeone (though Simeone is far more defensive-minded than the others).
Bielsa's downfall has always been the exhaustion of his team at the end of a season due to the intensity of his training and playing styles (usually with a small squad) -- and this you can definitely see with his Leeds teams. "If players were not human," he is said to have said, "I would never lose."
@@drs-xj3pb
I agree, it's not surprising as Bielsa's Leeds were build on a mix of high fitness levels and being exceptionally well drilled on certain movements and passes - for example there were a lot of very similar goals scored in terms of the patterns of play that led to them. While it probably looked chaotic to someone who hadn't seen much of them it was extremely well organised but took a lot of calculated risks in the build up play and often shunned the more 'pragmatic' side of the game (e.g. continuing to attack with the same levels of risk rather than slowing the game down to hold onto a narrow lead)
That said, I disagree completely on the exhaustion part (at Leeds anyway).
Leeds were still going very strongly at the end of the second and third seasons under Bielsa.
The year it fell apart was in part due to his insistence on having a small squad mixed with very inadequate PL recruitment from the DoF (outside of one or two exceptions).
That and an injury crisis which saw them having a squad of about 9 fit senior players at one point and a bench in at least one match consisting entirely of a bunch of extremely inexperienced young players (the oldest being 21, the youngest being a 15 year old) who are now mostly league 1- national league players.
You could point to the injury crisis as an example of exhaustion, but I don't think that's entirely fair as iirc it was the newer signings who were often the ones most frequently out injured alongside players with lingering issues from previous injuries.
It was more the importance and positions of the injured players that caused problems; 3 CB's, 1 LB and 2 ST's, which exposed the lack of depth in other areas too with a lot of the squad having to play out of position to cover for absences (e.g Ayling at CB and Dan James as a striker), not fully fit when playing (Bamford, Rodrigo, Firpo) or simply not good enough for the premier league at that point in their career.
Early 2000s were the peak of our civilization
Lies again? Google Workspace USD SGD
True, everything is too sanitised and commercialised
More money = less risk taking = less chaos/fun
Especially not fun due to players not being able to celebrate coz they'll be waiting for VAR to chalk off their goal
Beautiful forms of art being erased by money making machines across the entire world.
@@jackdelacey2505
VAR was a good decision. It should've been implemented earlier. VAR is what puts a halt to referee's biased decision, which often favored traditionally stronger team, player, country.
You're not sure if it was a goal? It is a goal if stronger team/player/country did it. It's not if it were other way around. That's what often happened before VAR.
Football did peak in 2006, great unique players, exciting games, even when it comes to console games, the great Pro Evolution 6 came out in 2006. I never knew how good I had it. Had I known I would have appreciated that time even more.
Nah, our youth peaked in 2006...I barely watch any football now, but I mostly blame my age
I was still 25/26 around that time, yeah I’m an old grumpy man now 😅😂
@@marko39383 your age is a shitty excuse , there’s 80 year olds that go to every match
@@Lukemasonmedia and waste their time and money watching a corporate dance.
@@mohmmadnabeehasan4672 But they’re not miserable and bitter like yourself.
In my opinion
We probably have the most athletic and technically gifted players of all time due to sports science and fitness etc
But the players have become identical and boring with no spontaneity and need to be told what to do and when to shoot
The game also has too much cheating which slows the game down
Maybe we should use var to call out diving and we need to start booking diving more
Interesting points to ponder 👍🏽.
"The game also has too much cheating which slows the game down " Ain't no way you said that like the 00's and 90s didn't have that with the Catenaccio from Italian teams
Not that I'm disagreeing with you but Brazilians are still physically finished before they reach 30. And as a United fan i'd take the technically gifted Anderson or Nani over the more physically gifted Anthony if that guy even excels at anything. Carrick vs Mctominay - Skill vs Physicality. Dutch football from the 90's vs today. Sure they are fitter but my gawd total football was legendary. Sports science doesn't increase player skill and only benefits super disciplined players like Ronaldo or Ibra but you could argue that they are genetically superior to begin with. Didn't help Rooney. Neymar has also left the building.
@@paquinraino8180 yeah the cheating/diving is a major issue which i am dumbfounded there isnt done anything about. But it's always been like this, and has actually been worse before. Still, now that we have VAR, we definitely should focus on improving the referees to the point that they can use it to the fullest extent and go harsh on things like diving because it ruins the game
@@maciejbala477they have, there are cards for diving and time wasting now and there is more time added than ever before
Anyone who watched the abomination of a title contention game of yesterday between City and Arsenal can simply understand that if such game of such high stakes is a snooze fest then football indeed got worse.
Everyone wants to hold onto the ball doing f*ck all with it but pass laterally because the other team are a bunch of spineless lizards with their buttocks stuck on the goal line.
There has to be a balance here. I may be speaking from a biased point of view, as a teenage football fan, but we can't pretend that the current tactical chess has become a bad idea. Recently i watched an "old school" Premier League game from the 90's and i was WIDELY surprised by the lack of quality. It was just throwing the ball long all the time, losing turnovers at the most dangerous areas. No... "La Pausa" as they call it now. Just throw, throw, kick, kick and rush. I didn't like it one bit. I mean, are those types of games the ones people are missing? Its one thing to be spineless and not try to attack, another to run like headless chickens for the goals.
@@catmeowing4329nostalgia blinds people. we'll look back at games in 30 years from now and be astonished at the lack of proper initiative and positioning too.
That's just nostalgia bias. People complained about elite club football being nothing but "parking the bus" and athleticism all through the 2000s especially in the EPL. A lot of big games in the 2000s were absolute snoozefests, people talked about it constantly back then too. High stakes games like WC and UCL semis and finals used to have a reputation for being guaranteed to be cagey and boring but have been much more exciting lately, the 2018 and 2022 WC finals and SFs were some of the most exciting ever. The 1990, 1994, 2002, 2006, 2010 and 2014 WC finals had 7 total goals between them and 4 red cards (should've been 5 for De Jong). It was 0-0 at full time in 1994, 2010 and 2014. Both the 2018 and 2022 final had more goals than 90/94/06/10/14 finals combined
@@catmeowing4329well yh, same reason why it looks like players like ronaldhino or okocha are no more while it actually isn't true, it's that now you can't make those skills without big risk of losing the ball bc back then they gave so much space
@@catmeowing4329 Premier League in the 90's was shyte.
Serie A and La Liga and maybe even Bundesliga were of superior quality as Premier League as English football was trying to recover from the 5 year European ban that was imposed onto English clubs because of what Liverpool fans did at Heysel.
As an American, the rigid specialization and systems in association football remind me a bit of how analytics have hurt baseball, in particular pitching. It used to be that you would see pitchers save their energy so they could pitch the whole game, the batter could put the ball in play and you'd see if the fielders could get him out. Now with more analytics and specialization in baseball, the fielders are only in the game to hit when their team is on offense and it is up to the pitcher to give maximum effort all of the time and strike everybody out. This means the ball isn't in play as much and managers are substituting pitchers out a few times a game which takes a few minutes each time that happens. This leads to most sports fans feeling that baseball is boring even though like with Pep Guardiola's managing this is how the game has evolved to produce more winning.
I was thinking about Moneyball and baseball analytics all the way through this video. XG is just the soccer version of FIP and BABIP.
If a manager is the first man sacked for poor results, it makes perfect sense that they would impose strategies that get results first. Contrary to popular belief, football is a professional sport, and as such winning tends to come before entertainment.
That was not always true. Entertainment came first before there was this much money and financial stakes in the sport.
Funny how no one ever thinks about this. Coaches get sacked if they don't win. Obvious remedy is to create a system to get the players to win.
And let’s not forget that players are getting paid to do their job on the field. Part of that, is to do what their boss tells them to do. Freedom on the pitch is not given or earned, it is a privilege and coaches will only allow it as long as it fits within their philosophy and system. The rate at which your creative freedom on the pitch is allowed will depend on the high percentage of its output.
If it is not entertaining, people will stop watching over generations and there will be no money. You might think that is impossible, but it is just a matter of time.
Ah yes, the dirtiest game in fifa history🇳🇱🇵🇹..all I remember is my dad yelling at the tv almost every minute or two, he was cussing out every player besides the keepers...what a horrendous game. And we lost as well. And 13 years later, we lost to portugal 1-0 again in nations league final. Portugal is Oranje's boogey team.
You should look up a match Chile - Italy at the 1962 World Cup. The battle of Santiago. They have karate kicks, boxing, rugby tackles, a player removed from the pitch by the police. There's a video I'd recommend "Italy v Chile World Cup 1962 The Battle of Santiago" from a channel called broodje80. It has the reporter at the start questioning whether the World Cup can survive that match, calling it "the most stupid, disgusting exhibition of football in history". So... check it out! 😀
Every team is a Dutch bogey team
Holland also lost to Portugal on three other occassions that were significant:
In late 2000, they lost 2-0 at home to Portugal in Wcup qualifying which proved decisive.
They lost 2-1 in the Euro 2004 semi-final, and then 2-1 again at Euro 2012 in the group stage.
@@jammybizzle666 cap
@@hiranom20 the pain..
Watching the Man City vs Arsenal fixture yesterday, it brought to mind a chess match between two Grandmasters, rather than a game of football. The resulting stalemate was the perfect expression of this corporate control masquerading as football.
Acting as if there weren't 0-0's back in the day
@@arjunghanekar6140 Serie A at its peak had so many 0-0's and 1-0's yet no one was complaining like people are now lol
yea man there were no 0-0s or 1-0s in the prime of Serie A. nostaliga merchants are my least favorite brand of football fans
Shades of Spain-Russia in the 2018 World Cup
The Liverpool - Man City game last month was very good though, end to end and enjoyable. And as long as I’ve watched football, there have been good games and there have been bad games. The reality is yesterday we had two teams who were scared to lose, that has always happened too.
I started liking football in the early 00s, when there were still many types of players, like the classic playmakers, who didn't have to run much and could just create chances, it was much more about individuality. When I look at football today, it's extremely fast and the pitch is full of athletes, which is also pretty impressive on a different level, but everything is much more predictable due to extreme reliance on systems and flawlessly executed routines. For instance, there was a guy named Pavel Horvath in the Czech Republic who retired just 10 years ago, he was overweight and barely ran, so when he got to play the Champions League and Europa League for Viktoria Plzeň, the opposition would laugh at him for a minute, until he perfectly passed the ball across the pitch and his team would score (for instance, Viktoria won on aggregate 5:0 against Napoli in 2013 and this player was a huge reason for it, even though he looked almost like post-retirement Sneijder). These were the things that made you love the game more, also because it made you (as a kid) feel like you could maybe make it on the professional level. When I look at the game today, it feels like watching perfectly programmed machines with superhuman physical abilities and even as a naive kid, I wouldn't be able to dream about playing on this level, because it feels almost unreal.
It's a lot like food - it used to be a little more "natural". Now, it's ultraprocessed.
And gaming, dating, the economy, globalisation etc.
People are sick of this new world and rightfully want tradition back.
@@APsGTG
Globalisation & digitalisation ironically lead to the opposite of pluralism & diversity and instead everything is just becoming homogeneous, uninspired and bland.
@@APsGTG especially true since this new world order is truly empty emotionally. Everybody is just drilled like a robot to accept it all and people do accept it, because they think they cant change anything, but in the end nobody is happy with it, expect some financial elitist gloablists and their banc accounts. Long story short: its just turbo capitalism.
For todays players: you earn more than any footballer ever. Why even bother bringing the same spectacle they did? You pass the ball around for 90min and drive home in your lambo afterwards
🏆
No it's not
Brazilian national team also suffer from the loss of flair in the game, almost losing that identity
Brazilian National Team is over.
True, might need another 10-15 years for a rebirth. I don’t even consider Endrick as generational talent, he’s just a modern 9. Messinho will be the best Brazilian talent probably since neymar or pato?
@@WhoAreYou905 i agree, endrick is only known for posting black and white pictures of him, making it look like he's the next pele, if it werent for the best pr team of all time everyone would realize that hes just some striker
28:41 "Too much of anything can make you sick. Even the good can be a curse" - Cheryl Ann Tweed, Fight For This Love, 2008.
Footballers are athletes now, first. And talent is second. When football was fun you had real ballers with talent. Now, it's just being able to run for 90 minutes without stopping.
You just saying BS just to say BS, there's still baller nowadays just like in any generation, you might not look at the right place
The thing that bothers me the most is how the players today suck at shooting the ball. Mbappe literally never scored a free kick in his life, Haaland has like maybe two goals from outside of the box in his career.
@@paquinraino8180 He watched the whole video and decided to ignore anything that was said.
@@stefan5730well, maybe because almost no-one tries to score from direct free-kick nowadays?
@@paquinraino8180 found the "just look in the right place" guy
You're bang on with how universal things have become; there used to be a lot more clashes of style between countries, if not between teams and managers.
Now it feels like everyone's trying to copy the same systems and same philosophies. I reckon social media and familiarity with other leagues has played a big role with that.
Yep. Same thing is happening in the actual world as well with every western country following in the steps of America (again, due to social media). Globalisation.
Honestly reminds me of in the Bible when it speaks about how the “whole world” will all come to be doing the exact same things.
Yes I used to watch certain leagues play to see the different styles of play but now it just seems like I'm watching the same thing with a different name.
Chiellini said a few years ago how Italy had lost its style trying to copy Spain and Guardiola. Instead of realising the veracity of what he said, people mostly vented against him. Italy were much better when they played their fierce defend and break style.
Unfortunately everything has gotten universal. The early days of MMA used to be one martial art against another like boxing versus wrestling but now everybody practices the same things. Even cities have lost their own uniqueness. They have the exact same stores and restaurants that you can find anywhere. It’s pretty sad
@@oldskoolmusicnostalgia Was italy really better because of their style of play or they just had better players? I do tend for the second one. Italy couldn't even manage to win a WC in their golden era and played awful football besides having a dream team. They managed to lose a WC besides having Baggio whose probably was the most talented italian player ever. On the other hand , in recent yearrs they were somehow able to win a European cup besides possessin one of the least talented squads ever.
The limited access to football is so true. I remember growing up supporting a neutral team but excited to watch united vs Depotivo on itv in the champsions league as you just didnt have access to the game
2006 was so stacked. Costa Rica had Wanchope, Ecuador Antonio Valencia, Paraguay Roque Santa Cruz, Trinidad & Tobago Dwight Yorke, Ivory Coast Drogba & Yaya, Iran Ali Daei, Mexico Rafa Márquez, Ghana Michael Essien, USA Howard & Dempsey, Croatia Modric, Japan Nakata, Korea Park Ji-sung, Togo Adebayor, Saudi Sami Al-Jaber and Ukraine had Shevchenko. In terms of pure star power and their legacy, on at least a national level, will never be repeated
The true star player of Trinidad & Tobago was Latapy, Ironically he hardly played in the world cup because we had to play boring football to survive. His style of play and age would have been a liability. The death of genius in the game.
@@Trini-Viking Russell Latapy is someone i only knew by name, so thanks for sharing
exactly. I'm wondering why he didn't say anything about the starpower...
there is barely a star in the Americas or Africa anymore. Eastern Europe has just Lewandowski and Modric which both are facing the end of their carreer, no Italian, Spaniard or Dutchman...
The U.S. was Howard, Donavan, Bocanegra, Claudio Reyna, and still Brian McBride.
That was Dempsey’s first WC and nobody knew who he was
@@sunzi7466 Yamal and Nico Williams are by far the best players on Spain
One important point.
For unique styles and identity, we have national teams.
This creates an immense anticipation for the big tournaments, that they are, in fact, something else.
Instead of the highlight to get to see a game once a week, we get it once every two years.
These tournaments get even more special because of the respite form the weekly grind.
Let's go Sweden this summer! We have our best offense in decades, and will threaten any team!
Oh, wait. We didn't qualify.
That Zidane take isn't too far off though, Zidane was a big game player. In Serie A, during the battle of the Trequartista(10), Baggio, Totti, and Rui Costa were a lot more consistent than Zidane when it came to producing magic week in week out. In Totti's case it was every week up until the injury. Which slowed him a tiny bit, and in Rui's case his love for Benfica which saved Benfica as a club itself. I have no doubt if Rui didn't ask to go to Benfica he would have been part Milan till 2007 if not longer and Benfica's current fortunes would be a lot different. He sacrificed part of his career for the love of his club.
It's the same with Riquelme with Villareal, week in week out
@@spacecamel2501 Riquelme is one of the best footballers to ever grace the planet, but English media will have people convinced they had better players lol
yes, it's worse, for all the reasons you stated, and more.
1) too many games. making players focus on athleticism and tactics in training, making themselves pace more, plus what Bruce said, and you have what we have today.
2) too much money at stake. leading to a top-down risk-averse approach to the game, and optimization strategies to minimize risk at every level
3) the lack of what italians call "bandiere". it has become so much about money, that not even the players care about the game, about the clubs anymore. that's why players like a Totti, Del Piero, Gerrard, Maldini, Raul, Zanetti... you know, the symbols of clubs who remain loyal no matter what, who stand the test of time, who grew up with the club, who are intrinsically linked.
4) and this is the biggest one: the curbing of the individual. to add to the points you made about flair and unpredictability. Grealish is the perfect example. he didn't become a better player with Guardiola, it's just that he followed instructions in a well oiled machine and he happened to be there when they won the Treble. he didn't transform Grealish into a "Treble winner" because Grealish was far from being fundamental in that win. but anyway, back to the main point, coaches nowadays, as you stated, expect that from everyone: do what you are told, follow instructions, don't stray too much from your position and assignments...
...and that's taught at the youngest levels. and kids these days join these schools and academies younger, and there are more of these schools and academies, leading to even more uniformity and a greater loss of unpredictability. i want to cite/paraphrase a recent interview with one of the greatest players ever, Roberto Baggio: "kids these days don't play in the streets anymore, they don't just put two shirts down and 'that's our goal, let's play', they go to school and are part of the machine and the streets are empty, so they don't have the flair and technique they used to" (that's the gist of it, roughly)
and he's not talking about the basic technique, because, again as you noted, it has gone way up, 'cause you don't really have as many centrebacks who can't pass the ball [for example], but today you don't even get a classic 9 like Pippo Inzaghi, who had little technique but great intuition about positioning which made him look like the luckiest player on earth year in year out, because with all that drilling, training, discipline, following of instructions, you're slowly eroding and erasing the intuition, the flair, the elan...
you've made a sport into a product, and we're part of the problem
one more thing i forgot that greatly illustrates the downward spiral of football:
the (d)evolution of the Champions League, formerly Cup. it used to be only about the actual League Champions, nobody else, which made it a bit more unpredictable as a competition, and gave more chances to 'lesser' teams. now (again, as you noted), it's always the same in different configurations. it's the Richest League, not the champions considering how many clubs from the top leagues qualify, and through how many pre-qual stages small league winners need to get through to even get a chance to play some 3rd placed team from a mid tier league so if they win they get to play in the group stages, only to get humiliated because all their top talent got poached by the big clubs when they were still underage anyway
oh, and that restriction on the CL meant that the UEFA Cup was much more important and prestigious, as you had a shitload of top tier clubs competing. it wasn't just 'that european cup for the poor', it was a legitimately great competition. and then they also axed the Cup Winners' Cup...
...all just so that the CL could have more clubs, more matches, more money to pocket.
it's just... sad
Beautifully put.
Maybe I'm old and 30 now but I remember every player from a 2008-09 game between Chelsea and Liverpool but now I have no idea who plays for Milan or Barcelona in UCL playoffs other than a couple big names.
Easy comparison to show between starting strikers in some teams in 2006 and in 2024 (the difference is INSANE)
Arsenal : Henry/Havertz (or Jesus)
Chelsea : Drogba/Jackson
Liverpool : Crouch/Nunez (maybe an improvement)
United : Van Nistelrooy/Hojlund
Real Madrid : Ronaldo/? (no real striker outside of Joselu)
Barcelone : Eto'o/35yo Lewandowski
Atlético : Torres/Morata
Milan : Shevchenko/37yo Giroud
Inter : Adriano/Martinez
Juventus : Ibrahimovic or Trezeguet/Vlahovic
Bayern : Makaay/Kane (improvement)
Yeah the days of elite strikers are over we use to have Aguero, Cavani, Falcao, Suarez, David Villa, Mario Gomez, Klose etc too.
Makaay is waaay better then Kane
@@SWOTHDRA as a German in the early 00's Makaay was the #1 name you'd hear every week when it came to awesome goals.
Though Kane is probably the best in the entire op 2024 lineup
Footballers became too rich and too childish. They don't have the grit to put on a spectacle anymore.
🎯💯
Money. Footballers became influencers.
Like Neymar: he is an adult with a kid and he acts like a clown on social media.
Bloody hell I never though back how many ballers 2006 World Cup had.
I absolutely do think it has gotten worse, but mostly because of just how much more money has entered the sport. That period of the mid-00s onwards has absolutely hurt the sport, where a number of things came all together. Investors entering the sport at roughly the same time as both Messi and Ronaldo emerging did a ton of damage in my opinion - prices inflated like crazy while everyone was on the hunt for the next Messi/Ronaldo. And then it stayed at that level before increasing again, which ultimately either priced out certain clubs that were doing decently well before, or forced them into unreliable gambles on the transfer market that ended up badly just to keep up. I hate it, to be honest.
Never thought the person who made the upload of "Unavoidable Battle" I have been listening to for at the very least 8 years would be in one of Alfie's videos.
I agree btw
@@tougedrift Once in a while, I do peek in and leave a comment here, especially considering how long the sport has been a part of my life, haha. Usually when it relates to the Bundesliga or a German player in some shape or form (as a Werder Bremen fan, I really have been feeling that part of being priced out and then forced into risky gambles on the transfer market, as the early 10s have shown. I miss the years during which we got great players like Micoud for dirt cheap...).
Prices got out of hand because of private ownership. Billionaires and countries owning football clubs
@@Collisco7 yeah. you get more and more clubs which just throw cash at problems, so everyone realizes they can demand more. Can just take a look at Chelsea under Boehly as a prime example and the prices they paid for players lol
@@segafreak2000When you said teams who gamble on transfers and end up falling away I immediately thought about Werder Bremen and in your next comment you say you are a Werder fan. Hope Werder can return where it belongs. Micoud,Diego,Ailton,Klose…just wow! Miss when “my” Bayern had Werder as they’re biggest rival and Thomas Schaaf on the bench. So many great memories come across.
Great video!
With everything you said, im very certain that ancelotti is the best manager nowadays. In many interviews he said he doesnt like to restrict his players, even when we talk about their personality. He always backs them up, and encourages them to be theirselfs, even if the whole spanish media is against them.
There is more objective data about how football has gone worse. 1- Free kicks. In the 90s every club in Brazil had a decent free kick taker and there were multiple great free kick takers: rogerio ceni, juninho pernambucano, marcelinho carioca, Marcos Assunção. I didnt watch much soccer when I was a kick, but despite of that I have many memories of goals being scored from free kicks from close and from very far. Check Renato from flamengo. Not ant sort of genius, but scored many goals like that. Goals direct from corner kicks also happened, much more rarely but it did. I was ched some of them. Take dribbling the goalie. When growing up I saw multiple strikers dribbling the goalie, not only Ronaldo Nazario, also Bebeto, Romario, Zico, and many others less know. It was expected from a top player. Recently Vinicius Jr has been dribbling goalies but it seems more of a speed and strength feat and less of a natural technical achievement. One more. Great players frequently were very capable of passing and scoring with both legs. Zico did. Ronaldo Nazario did. Just like Neymar did more recently. Adriano was criticized because at his level he should be able to play better with his right foot. Nowadays Brazil varely has a player vapable of using a single lega to score.
The biggest mistake nowadays is believing that technology can do more than it actually can. When comes to player's ability and technical development, practice with a ball is still #1 by far... Nowadays not only there is much more distractions and options than kids had growing up in the past but many training camp waste youth players with excessive strategy and positioning. Cheers 🥂
I used to watch teams I didn't follow because of how good the players were 20 years ago. Nowadays I'm not even bothered with the Champions League final. Sure it may be nostalgia, but it's mainly because of how average the players have become. I'm talking about forwards who could shoot better, DMs who could hold the ball, attacking midfielders who could pass, central defenders who were crazy consistent and wingbacks who could pass. The current generation is crazy inconsistent. Early 2000s were a special generation and acknowledging that doesn't make you all nostalgic. Look at how rare it is nowadays for teams to fight over a player and fans to wish they played for their team instead
Facts. The nostalgia argument is dismissive.
Basically, flair has completely been coached out of the game by the likes of Arteta & Guardiola.
But Guardiola also coached the most entertaining player in the world, Messi, which showed great individual skills. Xavi and Iniesta were also fun to watch. Maybe that was just coincidence or the beginning of his career.
@@adriant240 Yeah Pep carried the style everywhere with him, that Barca team were unreal and could move the ball fast, dribble and make killer passes. Pep went to Munich and tried that inverted full back crap with Lahm and it failed, Real hammered them in the CL, Pep never won the CL with a Bayern team that won the treble the year before with Jupp Heynckes. How many years did it take Pep to win the CL with City? like 8 years and spending a fortune. Pep and Arteta etc are boring managers that just want sideways and back passing.
@@alanchamberlain9902 Jurgen Klopp is the last hope of managers giving freedom to their players and watching something exciting... Klopp really understands football and it's essence... he doesn't want robots, he wants players who will succeed and fail with their own idea... you could see Salah and Mane go all over the pitch and try crazy dribbles and runs that were really inventive and Klopp was good with that... but Guardiola and the Guardiola-madness has ruined football... pass pass pass pass 50 times in a row... who gives a fuck Pep??? Nobody... also you're a fucking failure cause you spent 2 billion pounds on players to win one champions league trophy... well, hooray... what an achievement...
Everyone says Rodri is a brilliant DMF... all I see is a scared DMF to make a single risky pass... Busquets was a brilliant DMF, not Rodri... Pirlo was a brilliant DMF... Lothar Matheus was a brilliant DMF... watching Rodri play football is like eating chicken without seasoning... also Guardiola sucks every ounce of confidence out of his players... none of them has the confidence to try anything inventive cause he will be subbed out immediately...
Pep has a huge idea of himself but in reality he's the worst thing that ever happened to football... the guy who subbed THIERY FUCKING HENRY for scoring a goal he didn't like and dropped RONALDINHO cause he didn't care to make boring midfield passes for 20 mins straight...
@@adriant240Messi is absolutely not the most entertaining player on the planet
The best? Sure, but he ain't no Ronaldinho or Neymar
@@gabrielmagalhaes859 Neymar? Messi is more entertaining than Neymar. As for Ronaldinho, yeah you could argue. But Messi's dribble and passing are like nobody else's.
Short answer. Yes. Pep Guardiola ruined football. There are no shot stoppers, no-nonsense defenders or actual forwards now. There are just athletes who know to pass the ball till the end of eternity on both ends of the pitch in every team.
Absolute 100% facts. The sport has become too mechanical and has kicked out naturalness & soul in the name of stats, probability, and mechanisms.
If this football today was the football we grew up watching, we’d have never fallen in love with the sport.
Sums up modern football perfectly. It's a borefest.
Ye but when players don't play like fucking robots people complain bcuz football fans forget its a fucking game its meant to be entertaining at the end if the day winning shouldn't matter (to a certain extent)
Pep 😂😂 no way mate, Pep had 12 years or so without a UCL. It is literally impossible to ruin football as a single manager.
Pep was sanctioned for testing positive for PEDs. I'm sure his players are also on Pep-tides and the Guardiolone secret sauce.
Pep and his anti football is what's been wrong since the last 2000s. Effective but dull as hell. All the coaches copying him now, it's a painful sport to watch.
The fans are to blame too. If it’s so boring then stop watching so they will have no other choice than to make football exciting again
Been saying this for ages. Back in 2004 Czech Republic had Nedved. Who was unreal.. My point being that yes the big international teams was full of legends.. But even in the countries which weren't as competitive, they still had people like Nedved. Modric at Croatia is a recent example. Suarez for Uruguay. Portugal were crying out for the flair of Figo this summer. I vividly remember football being a lot more competitive being younger. Now it's all passing and some glorified dragged out tactical bore. Hence why I watch old football now.
Pep guardiola is the sole reason i despise modern football systems, and your jack graelish example is perfect.
Definitely not only nostalgia. I see a lot of similarities between football and poker in that sense. When i started following the latter in the early 2000s, the game was full of colorful characters and you had the "online kids" with their creative bluffing ways. With the rise of sharing of information online the game has now basically been solved. Elite players no longer think in ways like "does he have it or not?" but play game theory optimal. No table chatter, just a bunch of robots sitting dead still not to give away any body languge. When some sports and games are perfected they simply, for many, lose some of their entertainment value from a poetic/romantic point of view. But miles better, no question
Update. It's EURO 2024 and so called "modern stars" are not capable of crossing, passing, shooting, dribbling and on top of that lack the passion to win. I think fans are slowly waking up and not buying this narrative that the reason these players are not performing good is because football has improved so much. It's propaganda pushed by UEFA because those players are their milk cows and with how depressing and terrible modern players are they have to push this propaganda to sell the tickets. A team like Portugal with only 7% crossing accuracy in the quarter finals is a stat that can't be justified. They DON'T KNOW how to cross. I would pull the numbers for sucessful passes but those numbers are going to be flawed because all they do is pass back or pass to the nearest teammate. They are INCAPABLE of sending through balls or lobbed passes. First touches are so bad that balls are straight up bouncing off of the players like they are amateurs. There is another interesting statistic is that we have reached semi finals and no one has scored a single free kick. Current top scorer is Gapko with 3 goals I don't have to talk about dribbling because we can all see that no one is dribbling this tournament or should I say no one is capable of beating their defenders. Seeing Pepe, a 42 year old with more red cards than most of the younger players appearances and still bullying them further proves my point how overrated they are. "But but the pace of the game is faster now... players are running a lot more" Yes. It is easy to run a lot more now that they can constantly take breathers every few minutes due to constant diving, faking injuries, VAR checks, whining & ganging up on the ref and wasting time and now they introduced water breaks too. Imagine how good Maradona would have been if he was protected as current players and if players were allowed to whine and dive so much to take a breather? He was already running around like a cokehead imagine how much energy he would have in modern soft football.
Man You’re right the Euros 2024 was so terrible and boring my goodness there was barely any goals it’s like every team plays the same now
Pep had also part in this with his endless passing tactic
When I was a kid in the 90's/ 00's I absolutely loved football. There were so many characters and such a wide range of top footballers with unique play styles/ identities. However now when I watch football it just seems bloated, over analysed, over thought and boring quite frankly. To me most modern footballers are just clones of each other and everything is so tactically efficient its actually taken some of the chaos and soul out of the game. I've always felt for a while and said to a people a few times that my generation had the best time for football.
33:14 the irony of this video ending becoz Man City vs Arsenal is about start, but it actually fits the ending of the video
The creativity leaving the Sport is so sad.
Football used to be a work of art. Now it's a work of a system.
Thank Pep for that
My issue with modern football is more and more team try to play the same way, possession, attacking, pressing. It is a great style that all the successful teams use, but 20 years ago there actually was a variety of styles and philosophies.
National and club teams played with distinct identities and personalities. Like how Mourinho’s tactics contrasted sharply with Wenger; SAF and Ancelotti are both man-manager, but one is strict while the other is chill.
Nowadays everyone is drilled in the same way on the field, also all the PR and social media concerns kind of neutered the individual personalities, when are we going to get another Vieira vs. Keane style of clash of strong leaders?
"Thirty years ago players went out with the fullest license to display their arts and crafts. Today they have to make their contributions to a system. Individuality has to be sublimated to teamwork."
Herbert Chapman 1932.
The same nonsense has been endlessly regurgitated for at least ninety years.
interesting
Watch Quang Hải - you will be amazed
He is one of the few, top class, hyperexpressive ballers in the game - putting his art on the pitch against all top players from Asia and other teams for 8 years and counting.
He is the reason why I watch Vietnamese football. Football is not just Premier League
Never heard anyone say this until recently
Wow
You either didn't watch football in the 2000s or you're just saying this to be different
It’s not all Pep’s fault, it’s everyone else that copied him and didn’t develop a different style to challenge him
Think I’m just growing out of football now that my generation, the Messi/Ronaldo generation is ending.
It’s deeper than that the Messi cr7 era is ending. The sport is changing for the worse
For a long time I also have been thinking that 2006 WC was the peak of football in my lifetime but I never actually wondered why. This video sums it up pretty nicely.
It is a very good question.
As a so called "lesser club" supporter, I am lucky that I won't fall into the fanboy trap when it comes to club players at international level. Although I will say even if he did leave in the Summer, James Ward-Prowse should be on that plane ahead of Henderson.
The only players I see in the current England set up that would get in to the Golden Generation are Bellingham and Kane. I don't see a John Terry or Steven Gerrard in this current crop.
That could be nostalgia talking - I'm 35 and I'm old before my time so it's possible - but when I think about it, managers like Guardiola and Klopp (English league bias to be sure) have very much made modern football about team tactics over individual brilliance.
It would explain why the flair players like Grealish and Barkley have at times struggled.
IMO the period between 07 and 15 was peak football simply because it wasn't either tactics-driven or individual brilliance, it was both. It should be both managers coaching players to efficiently do their job but also understand that those players are human beings...
Ward-Prowse should be in every England squad until he retires.
@@ricaard6959When Pep went full system mode it killed the need for specialist players. Even deadball specialist since he's always gonna favour the short pass. So 😴
@@ricaard6959this stuff makes me believe in the bibles end time prophecy 😂 the 07-15 era was so unbelievably blessed that we experienced the best before nwo comes in. See the super league prequel in the new champions league format.
One thing I can be thankful for is ill never forget seeing Ronaldinho in that Barca/Brazil as a young kid and being mesmorized, Ronaldo in that United shirt and Drogba in that Chelsea shirt. Classic Prem was peak.
I am a 2010s dude but when my dad showed me football from 1990s and 2000s, I got more excitement from watching a 2005 UCL final than the 2023 final
Also I downloaded Retro Football Manager so that I can at least manage them
EDIT: Wait, today is April 1st?! Goddammit Alfie!!!
I don't think it's the footballers and the actual sport itself that has gotten worse. If anything, the beautiful game is still well.......beautiful. And recent competitions proved that. What got worse is the stuff that happens OFF the field. Everything from the fans to the FIFA governing body to countries trying to use the game to "sportswash" and worst of all, money money MONEY!!!
I think everyone is just getting more cynical now because all these stuff feels more on the nose lately and it can suck the fun out of enjoying the sport.
"People bringing in politics" eh?
Just to remind you, people's existence (and persecution for existing) isn't politics- it's something that has been *politicised* for the sake of attempting to suppress the fact. ;)
Bringing in politics into football has happened for as long as you can think though, lol. It's not a recent thing at all. Why do you think one of the very first world cups went to Italy, for example? Or why Argentina or Spain were allowed to hold one despite dictatorship circumstances in both of these countries at the time (though by the time it happened in Spain, that one had fallen already, more that there was one when they were picked).
@@alexisauld7781 Not THAT kind of "politics". I'm talking about local and global governance, that kind of politics. What you're talking about is common human decency, which I think shouldn't even need to be debated about whether people of different backgrounds should be allowed to be left alone and be comfortable with who they are.
I'm talking about politics like how Saudi is trying to "sports wash" it's contentious history by hosting the World Cup and pretending to be a fully civilized nation.
@@segafreak2000 I know, that's why I made the point its more on the nose nowadays. Like Saudi hosting an upcoming World Cup.
@alexisauld7781 just to remind you that social issues have always been political in nature
7:49 That must be the gayest picture of Messi
The old school approach is returning with some coaches like Inzaghi and Thiago Motta. They play a beautiful brand of football. I spend my entire Saturdays watching football from all leagues, but I've never found myself watching City under Pep out of my own free will if it's not a Champions League KO tie.
it definitely got worse. every 2nd manager wants to be pep guardiola and wants to defend with the ball. Its killing the passion out the football.
Not many teams like Atalanta for example where they play fast and attacking football that we all loved and enjoyed watching.
Part of it is that in 2006 many of the named stars in the intro were young stars and promises that actually lived up to their hype/expectations. In the following world cups there has been promising players who didn’t fully live up to their hype in their career such has James Rodriguez in the 2014 WC
Right. You never see young stars really making it anymore. It’s always a player who was in the shadows till he was 21-23 years old who comes onto the scene and is now the best.
@@APsGTGMbappe, Bellingham, Wirtz, etc. The problem is you don't know which young players will succeed until they already have. There are good young players now who might fizzle out, and others who will live up to expectations, but we don't know who yet.
Best German players in the premier league of all time. (Day 619)
I will not give up until the video is made or Alfie himself tells me to stop. Everyone else telling me that will be ignored.
If you don't believe my number, just go back to the previous videos. I'm at the bottom most of the time, but I'm there.
We believe in you
Bouyaka Bouyaka! 619!
We believe in you
Yes! Still going strong!
Uwe Rosler?
It’s not just that we have worse and less entertaining football but also boring tactics and footballers full of fear and that are too afraid to act out on instinct and be who they are. They are now the image of the club instead of the footballer who plays for the club. Absolutely abysmal, and people(online) dislike and thrash individualist in any team all the time. They think in stats and numbers which is embarrassing.
the big difference is the lack of starpower. 2008-2023 everyone was focusing on Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. now, we are left with nothing...
6:56 you can't really compare players from such diffreent eras in numbers of goals and assists. Players at Maradona's time had much less comletitive matches, both at club level as in national teams. For example Messi had more than double the amount of caps as Maradona, mainly because there are much more internationals now than back then.
The really spectacular aspects of the game are becoming more and more rare as every team prioritises possession football and maximising xG.
P.S. xG being a statistic that people care about is the worst thing to ever happen to football
Why? No way a stat is the worst thing to ever happen to football.
@@RaiyanReetom the stat - no
The obsession over it - absolutely yes.
Quote by Bill Russell: “The only important statistic is the final score.”
@@RaiyanReetom I didn't say the stat was the problem, I said the obsession over it was.
Just look at the ridiculous nonsense Poch said last week that Chelsea should be 4th because of the statistics. They are 4th on xG but every other stat has them at mid table or worse, it's weapons grade nonsense.
To quote Bill Russell: “The only important statistic is the final score.”
@@jbbresers Thats just a coach being delusional.
In short words, Pep and his disciples (Artetas, Kompanys of these world ) are the one who are destroying football. That's why Klopp leaving the PL is one of the biggest PL loses.
The thing is Pep style can only work with unlimited spending.
Klopp isn't much better. He's created a system that relies on pure athleticism
It all went downhill after 2014
Great video as always Alfie. Quick thing though, when you were talking about Saka at 20:18, you used a pic of Tariq Lamptey
money corrupting leagues, diving becoming common place - slowing down games and making for boring plays, VAR pulling goals that would’ve otherwise stood years past. I’m not even sure if there are any ways to fix these issues.
unfortunately football is becoming just another side of immediate profit over everything else, this is not just football of course and basically the direction we as humanity have chosen to become complacent.
amazing video btw.
In Portugal there was lot of talks about our youth academies lately turning players into robots and losing the creativity (street soccer like) our players used to have and it seems they been changing it a bit to allow more creativity again and make winning at young age less important than developing the player.
Yes. Ruined by money. I mean lots of it. The game has been priced out of the regular Joe's with only questionable nations and uber wealthy 0.001% of the world able to be genuinely successful.
People got realize these systemic approaches these mangers are taking are just more effective to win games instead of the constant unnecessary flair football some players play without being effective while playing that style.
This. Modern football requires that all players fullfill their role in the system at all times, or your team will lose because of your mistakes. Everyone is good at transitions, so ironing out mistakes is so, so important.
Such an interesting point on highlights and the lack of full games we had access to then vs. now. I hadn't considered that.
'A business of football compared to a game of football' simple as that. Even the design change of a jersey every season becomes environmental unfriendly and the competition of the designs leads to far poorer outlook but more expensive. Rich teams get richer, poor teams get poorer and no future growth for small teams despite money in the pool gets larger and larger.
We all miss just watching football on tv. MOTD, TH-cam, FA cup. I can’t afford subscription. Football is for the lucky few now. Just give us some more. What harm would it do?
The fitness levels now is insane now but it has turned into game of running and standing in the right place rather than individual brilliance which has made it boring
It has, used to be too hard to score, now it's the opposite - PL is having record averages, CL is frequently above 3 goals a game after rarely touching that before, it's a bunch of tap-ins and howlers
Not a surprise, in the eighties and nineties italian defensive football ruled and brutal tackles were allowed…every team had a butcher…that had an impact on the score😂
@@donaldvanvliet9039 Yeah that's the other extreme, Serie A was so defensive that goals per game dipped under 2, which is insane and lower than any WC ever for context. 2.5-2.8 has been the standard
there's a pretty simple answer to this debate - the white collar managerialism that's completely overtaken football (at least the top tiers). i (very regrettably) work in the IT industry, and while people are smarter, tech is better, code's a lot more foolproof than when we were kids, there's no passion. hell, i used to be only vaguely interested in it and now find myself working here only because of the $$$. it's almost the same in football. you have the big 4 (at best, looking at you france) of each country, just like the big 4 in tech (and their analogues in the other countries), and eeeeeveryone else trying to find an angel investment through competing in the top (investment)tiers. the players, like the IT professionals leaving for the US, leave for the top 5 leagues for a paycheck, and spend more of their lives as immigrants than they do at home. and the style of play? man, watching burnley play pep-ball is like asking me to configure and deploy an application, i'm mediocre at best, and even that's an exaggeration, but for the money? i can pretend i'm up there 😂
The aggression has gone, like how the players used to be so aggressive towards referee, now we have female referees in men's sports, can't be aggressive towards them or you're apparently EVIL.
I personally just love the 70s football, putting on the 1970 world cup semifinal and watch Siggi Held Out of nowhere dribble past four defenders like he is literally Messi and then do a cross that is so bad it looks like he never did a cross before. That is what I associate most with old football, players who are in their strong case world class in every standard but in parts of the game they are not too familiar are like literal amateurs
God playing PES 4, 5, and PES 6 and world cup 2006 was incredible, good times.
I think, Messi and Ronaldo set the bar too high by dominating. That’s why people don’t see as many stars in future world cups compared to 2006 World Cup.
Very good point
Messi and Ronaldo pretty much failed both in almost all their Worl Cup attempts. Even in 2022 Messi only scored because he was given 5 weak penalties lmao
Football just became too technical. The best example for this is if you compare Haaland and Mbappe the two best strikers now to Cr7 and Messi, they might score as many or even more goals then these two legends but i always got that feeling that something is missing and it doesnt matter how many goals they score they will never achive such legendary status. They dont have nothing individually special about them. Or even better example an El clasico, in my opinion it doesnt feel special anymore, its just another game to get through, its probably because these young players doesnt have the same passion for their team as the old ones like Puyol or Ramos.
Maybe that's how our grandparents felt when they saw di Stefano retiring and seeing a player like pele take over