Is top flight and national football dead, or is it just not for me any more?

clean-sheet-culkin

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This is a bit of a cry for help / need for optimism.

Watching England last night filled me with the same frustrated and confused emotion I've had watching United over the past few years, but reflecting on it I came to a realization that either football is done for me, or that I need to watch different football.

Growing up, the type of top flight and national football I watched was that of defenders sitting deep, and midfielders not helping them. This tactic encouraged the opposing team to try their luck, thus creating space on the pitch for a range of passes, and both distance and width for runners to run.

This style of football necessitated brave and last ditch defending, maestro midfielders, and speedy/aggressive attackers. The result was end to end, fast paced, relentless counter-attacking football that I personally enjoyed most. Growing up, I didn't always see my club win, but I was never bored. Football was full of risk and fun.

Later, some teams worked out that if they moved to a system of pressing higher up the pitch to overload the opposing defense, they'd get a lot of joy. It was still fun football, because when the overload worked, it was aggressive and clever and sudden, but when it didn't, the counter was still very much on. So games were still end to end.

In the last 5-10 years though, the question has been how do you keep the press but solve for the counter? The answer seems to be that you pack the middle of the field and push your defenders up the pitch. Now, when your press doesn't work and you lose the ball, you are much more likely to be able to nullify the counter.

The problem is, to do that, you need your defenders to walk the ball to the half way line, then play the entire game in one half with no space. That means you need tacticians who can keep the ball in close quarters, and wait patiently for mistakes, you don't need speedsters and maestros who don't have space to pass or run into.

The result? A football game at the highest level is just a boring, repeated, predictable pattern, sprinkled with a couple of moments of human error. I'm sure some people love the deeply tactical and patient game in the same way they love the same in large business, but I just find it SO boring, and I don't see it getting back to the days where it was just fast and fun.

So, is top flight and national football totally dead, or is it just dead to me?
 
Bit of both. The modern game is boring and teams are mostly managed by boring bastards, but you've also become an old[er] boring bastard too.
 
Discussed this recently in another thread. Guardiola has lead the way towards a very risk averse percentage play where players play within a system. There seems to be more goals these days but the football is joyless.

There needs to be a rule change to disrupt things. Either shot clock, stop clock or more emphasis on wins over draws like two a bonus points for 3+ goals so teams at least have a go. Better to lose 5-3 than draw 0-0.
 
Try watching American sports for a year and come back and tell us if you still think football is boring.
 
Pressing and the encouragement of sideways passing is the worst thing that happened to football.

That too shall pass, a team playing old school 4-4-2 without inverted wingers * vomits in mouth* will come along, and win the lot, when? I do not know, but it will happen.

Feck Pep

Bondi77 said:
Try watching American sports for a year and come back and tell us if you still think football is boring.
Click to expand...
Nothing beats 10 minutes of action between 3 hours of terrible beer, fried chicken and hemorrhoid treatment commercials.
 
National football is the purist form of football and definitely isn't dead. In between tournaments is boring but the tournaments are fantastic always. The English National team is just depressing, but it's not like this for others. Might be you just getting older and wishing for younger days.

Club football on the other hand, yeah that's changed irreparably. The money, the corrupt owners, the social media obsession, the "perfect tactics" that do everything to eliminate individualism and mistakes to have ultimate control... The elite level of club football is pretty soulless these days and entertainment/unpredictability wise it's not a patch on international football. You just aren't able to implement the same type of systems at that level due to the lack of coaching time and not being able to build a team through signings, but just having to work with what you have. It won't be so bad when Pep fecks off, since he's just a ridiculously good coach and the others can't do what he can, but they can try and copy which is still effective.

But definitely don't confuse England for the rest! This is the standard England that everyone has seen for the past 25+ years, nothing different there.
 
DWelbz19 said:
Bit of both. The modern game is boring and teams are mostly managed by boring bastards, but you've also become an old[er] boring bastard too.
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This. Maybe its due to the fact that you couldn't watch all the games you wanted in the past.
I was lucky when I could watch a game midweek and another game in the weekends was a blessing. So it looked like every was a spectacle.
Nowadays you could watch any game any time but I dont have no patience nor time to just sit and watch whole games cause of the family life, obligations and so on and there's too much football all around.
 
clean-sheet-culkin said:
This is a bit of a cry for help / need for optimism.

Watching England last night filled me with the same frustrated and confused emotion I've had watching United over the past few years, but reflecting on it I came to a realization that either football is done for me, or that I need to watch different football.

Growing up, the type of top flight and national football I watched was that of defenders sitting deep, and midfielders not helping them. This tactic encouraged the opposing team to try their luck, thus creating space on the pitch for a range of passes, and both distance and width for runners to run.

This style of football necessitated brave and last ditch defending, maestro midfielders, and speedy/aggressive attackers. The result was end to end, fast paced, relentless counter-attacking football that I personally enjoyed most. Growing up, I didn't always see my club win, but I was never bored. Football was full of risk and fun.

Later, some teams worked out that if they moved to a system of pressing higher up the pitch to overload the opposing defense, they'd get a lot of joy. It was still fun football, because when the overload worked, it was aggressive and clever and sudden, but when it didn't, the counter was still very much on. So games were still end to end.

In the last 5-10 years though, the question has been how do you keep the press but solve for the counter? The answer seems to be that you pack the middle of the field and push your defenders up the pitch. Now, when your press doesn't work and you lose the ball, you are much more likely to be able to nullify the counter.

The problem is, to do that, you need your defenders to walk the ball to the half way line, then play the entire game in one half with no space. That means you need tacticians who can keep the ball in close quarters, and wait patiently for mistakes, you don't need speedsters and maestros who don't have space to pass or run into.

The result? A football game at the highest level is just a boring, repeated, predictable pattern, sprinkled with a couple of moments of human error. I'm sure some people love the deeply tactical and patient game in the same way they love the same in large business, but I just find it SO boring, and I don't see it getting back to the days where it was just fast and fun.

So, is top flight and national football totally dead, or is it just dead to me?
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That’s a really good explanation as to the ‘progression’ of football.

Brought up watching Kanchelskis and Giggs tear it up. So watching Antony and others struggle to beat a man and invariably pass it backwards can be an absolute snooze fest. That said, I still can’t switch off. Perhaps I’m hoping for performances like that of previous years
 
Bondi77 said:
Try watching American sports for a year and come back and tell us if you still think football is boring.
Click to expand...
I don’t know how NFL is so huge

It’s 60% adverts, 20% the players standing about doing nothing, 10% some sort of non-NFL related entertainment, then 10% is the actual match
 
People only focusing on big teams like they're the only ones that matter and then claim a competition is boring because the favorites aren't playing great football.

The Euros are much more entertaining now that they expanded them to 24 teams and they should go further and expand it to 32 teams.

So many storylines and passion from the smaller countries.

Austria looking great, Hungary last minute goal, Croatia heartbreak, Slovenia had 1% of their country's population on stadium seeing them go through for the first time. The likes of Georgia giving their all. The Ukraine-Romania-Slovakia-Belgium group where everyone has 3 points after 2 games.

But people are telling me this is boring because England and France are playing bad football.

No one cares. International football is not about great football, it's about the storylines and random and unexpected things happening. Last night you saw players from Slovenian league nullifying Bellingham and Foden and that's what the beauty of the Euros is.
 
Pexbo said:
Discussed this recently in another thread. Guardiola has lead the way towards a very risk averse percentage play where players play within a system. There seems to be more goals these days but the football is joyless.

There needs to be a rule change to disrupt things. Either shot clock, stop clock or more emphasis on wins over draws like two a bonus points for 3+ goals so teams at least have a go. Better to lose 5-3 than draw 0-0.
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I agree, I've thought for a while that a 0-0 draw should be the same as a loss, and you get no points. There should be no reward for settling for a draw before the game has even begun, and definitely some incentive to have a go and try and score.

Bondi77 said:
Try watching American sports for a year and come back and tell us if you still think football is boring.
Click to expand...

Funnily enough, it's my increased interest in North American sports that has coincided with my lack of interest in football in the last 10 years or so. It's only my emotional connection to United that keeps me somewhat interested, but I'd rather watch the NHL or NFL over a non-United Premier League games these days.
 
Real Name said:
This. Maybe its due to the fact that you couldn't watch all the games you wanted in the past.
I was lucky when I could watch a game midweek and another game in the weekends was a blessing. So it looked like every was a spectacle.
Nowadays you could watch any game any time but I dont have no patience nor time to just sit and watch whole games cause of the family life, obligations and so on and there's too much football all around.
Click to expand...
Also a good point. Being exposed to so many matches, literally every day, it becomes taken for granted. Sure when it was once a week on sky it couldn’t be missed. I remember the mass excitement when we started with super Sunday and later mnf.
 
Has football ever been more popular though? Drawing millions from all walks of life and corners of the globe?

Money might damage it but the fact there has never been as much in the game shows most people do enjoy the entertainment.
 
I don't think it helps that both teams you support (United and England) are largely crap and boring.
 
I’ve not enjoyed/ cared for England in like forever. United, even when shit, I’m still obsessed about.
 
There's a lot of selective memory about football in the past. I loved football in the late 90s and 00s, but the quality of football wasn't as good as today. Sure you had legendary players with unique skills that don't exist now, but other than their moments of magic, there wasn't that much interesting stuff going on.

The intensity of football is much higher now and there's usually more going on in football games than it used to. I watched a lot of 00s games recently and the pace was just slower than today, teams taking their time as there wasn't the kind of pressing you see today, parking the bus was more common than now.

I mean all you need to do is watch the Juventus - Milan CL final in 2003 which is the game that perfectly represents that era of football. Two teams packed with stars and legendary players yet nothing was going on because both teams just sat back and played with a slow pace.

Meanwhile today you can watch any Premier League game and be more entertained because the intensity is just much higher.

The problem is people only rewatch classic games with a lot of goals and action and think every game looked like this in the past.

For anyone who thinks football is more boring today, just do this. Pick 20 RANDOM matches from the 90s and 00s, and try to watch them without some nostalgia for players. You'll be surprised how boring most of them were looking back.

For example here's one totally random game I watched few weeks ago, Roma-Valencia from 2002/03 (CL second group stage)


How is this better than the football we see now?

These were two of the best teams in Europe at the time in a decisive CL game and the game looks just much less intense than football today, it's mostly really boring to watch. The build up from both teams is just so slow. Not to mention how empty the stadium is and the pitch looks like crap. This is how early 00s football looked like for the most part. Yet people have this notalgia think going on watching Ronaldinho and Totti highlights and think that was an era of some pure attacking creative football.
 
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clean-sheet-culkin said:
Watching England last night filled me with the same frustrated and confused emotion I've had watching United over the past few years, but reflecting on it I came to a realization that either football is done for me, or that I need to watch different football.
Click to expand...
Having to watch England and United in recent years can have that effect on you. But it's not football as such that's turned boring, it's mostly those two teams. Tactical changes happened as you explain in the rest of your post, but then it wasn't Pep's teams that dominate the CL recently, but mostly Real Madrid who still play a more individualistic game. Not that long ago we also saw Bayern being at the top of their game with a total gung-ho approach, not a risk-averse Pep style. Overall football is not as bad as you feel it is, but same developments definitely aren't great.
 
Hard disagree on the international football part. United aside it's my refuge from the monotony of top-level club football. Afcon and the Asian Cup earlier this year were great fun and now the Euros are living up to expectations despite its flawed format.
 
I'm with you. Previous tournaments I would have watched as many games as I could, these Euros I've only watched two and a bit matches. I keep thinking there are fewer players that I care about watching nowadays than there were when I was younger. As some others have said, maybe it's me that's changed rather than the footie.
 
International football is fine, mostly.

Club football is getting worse and worse. The inevitable fate of every entertainment ran by beancounters and boffins.
 
International football is fine. Club football is well past its prime as a competitive sport in terms of its organisation, but liking the aesthetics of actual football styles that are in favour is a subjective thing. In that respect, i'd say most 10-20 year periods have their strengths and weaknesses.
 
Pughnichi said:
Also a good point. Being exposed to so many matches, literally every day, it becomes taken for granted. Sure when it was once a week on sky it couldn’t be missed. I remember the mass excitement when we started with super Sunday and later mnf.
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When I was a kid you could get on a national tv broadcast one Serie A game on Sundays, usually some derby and one CL game on Wednesdays. From time to time they'd have a Premier league game and I would be happy as a pig in a mud watching that. You'd cherise the occasion. :D
 
All very good points raised here. The euros just haven't excited me this year, I think I've enjoyed maybe just a couple of games!
 
This just hasn't been a great tournament so far, but the Qatar world cup showed that top level international football is hardly boring, yes there were all sorts of controversies around the location and timing, but that aside, there was some great football on display culminating in one of the best finals.
 
Thanks everybody. You saved me today.

Summarizing your thoughts:
  • It's true, some parts of modern football are definitely more boring, or at least appeal to a different audience.
  • I'm wearing nostalgic rose-tinted glasses.
  • I'm watching the boring bits, not the exciting bits.
  • I'm a boring whining bastard.
Solutions
  • Find better games to watch.
  • Find newer football formats with better rules to watch, and support them.
  • Quit your whining, bastard.
Thanks!
 
In the 6 Nations & Rugby Championship, a bonus point is awarded if a team scores 4 or more tries, and also if you lose by less than 7 points.

Obviously the loss one wouldn't work, but awarding a point for say 3/4 goals scored wouldn't be a bad idea and actually encourage folk to go for it.
 
For me it's a bit of everything. I didn't watch the last world cup and I haven't watched any of the Euros because I find Internationals fairly boring now especially since the Nations league started up. Club wise, I keep up to date with matches and news but I don't plan my life around it anymore. VAR and the money in the game are both a huge turn off for me and its more slow and tactical than ever. It also doesn't help that I'm a grumpy old man that hasn't got the tolerance levels that I used to.
 
Annihilate Now! said:
I don't think it helps that both teams you support (United and England) are largely crap and boring.
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Same with me. As a person who supports United, Edinburgh City, and the Scotland national team, there hasn’t been much joy as of recent. Scotland qualifying for our first tournaments in my lifetime has been good though.
 
Vault Dweller said:
In the 6 Nations & Rugby Championship, a bonus point is awarded if a team scores 4 or more tries, and also if you lose by less than 7 points.

Obviously the loss one wouldn't work, but awarding a point for say 3/4 goals scored wouldn't be a bad idea and actually encourage folk to go for it.
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That's an intersting idea I think, but probably mostly would increase the scores in matches that see a lot of goals already. If you are having a truly bad day and are down 1-4 or something like that, at the moment you just go into damage control, but with that rule you might have a reckless go and if it ends 3-8 you still got a point out of it.

But if it's a boring 0-0, nothing would change as that means you get one point as well. For that you might still need the "no points if you don't score a goal" rule, I think that could have a bigger impact than your suggestion.
 
I think what has made the Euros particularly boring so far is the 3rd place qualification format. It means teams are rewarded for playing defensively and is likely the only route out of a group for teams like Slovenia. The aim is to end up with 3 points and a relatively in-tact goal difference and you're through.

There would likely be more interesting and free-flowing games if UEFA just expanded the tournament to a size where you only need 2 qualifiers from each group to make a round of 16.
 
groovyalbert said:
I think what has made the Euros particularly boring so far is the 3rd place qualification format. It means teams are rewarded for playing defensively and is likely the only route out of a group for teams like Slovenia. The aim is to end up with 3 points and a relatively in-tact goal difference and you're through.

There would likely be more interesting and free-flowing games if UEFA just expanded the tournament to a size where you only need 2 qualifiers from each group to make a round of 16.
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Agreed. UEFA have over engineered the format to the point where we may see several “Greece-wannabes” hoping to defend their way to the final, relying on the odd counter attacking opportunity.
 
DRJosh said:
Agreed. UEFA have over engineered the format to the point where we may see several “Greece-wannabes” hoping to defend their way to the final, relying on the odd counter attacking opportunity.
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We always had that. Greece were basically "Italy wannabes".

imo this has been a pretty good tournament so far, though the last round of games has mostly been disappointing and is quickly levelling things out.
 
Pexbo said:
Discussed this recently in another thread. Guardiola has lead the way towards a very risk averse percentage play where players play within a system. There seems to be more goals these days but the football is joyless.

There needs to be a rule change to disrupt things. Either shot clock, stop clock or more emphasis on wins over draws like two a bonus points for 3+ goals so teams at least have a go. Better to lose 5-3 than draw 0-0.
Click to expand...

To add some chaos, goal kicks should have to be ‘served’ into the opposition half like tennis, meaning at least there’s a brief moment of necessary, masculine ball-winning.
 
groovyalbert said:
I think what has made the Euros particularly boring so far is the 3rd place qualification format. It means teams are rewarded for playing defensively and is likely the only route out of a group for teams like Slovenia. The aim is to end up with 3 points and a relatively in-tact goal difference and you're through.
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Slovenia played attacking football against Serbia for most of the game and was winning until the last minute. Obviously they're not going to play attacking football against England.

Denmark also had only 3 points and finished second and would have qualified under the old format.

I don't like the 3rd place football as I think there should be 32 teams on the Euros, but it didn't make Euros boring. It often means that we get an extra competitive match in the last games of group stage. For example under the old format the Hungary Scotland game would have counted for nothing, but under this format it was an exciting game with both teams needing to win and we ended with dramatic finish.

Smaller teams always played defensive football on internation tournaments, that's really nothing new.
 
LA BOMBA said:
I mean all you need to do is watch the Juventus - Milan CL final in 2003 which is the game that perfectly represents that era of football. Two teams packed with stars and legendary players yet nothing was going on because both teams just sat back and played with a slow pace.
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That match doesn’t represent anything other than a random CL final between two Italian teams that was always going to go this way, in any era.

Does City - Inter final represents this era?
Or Serbia - Denmark?
 
stefan92 said:
That's an intersting idea I think, but probably mostly would increase the scores in matches that see a lot of goals already. If you are having a truly bad day and are down 1-4 or something like that, at the moment you just go into damage control, but with that rule you might have a reckless go and if it ends 3-8 you still got a point out of it.

But if it's a boring 0-0, nothing would change as that means you get one point as well. For that you might still need the "no points if you don't score a goal" rule, I think that could have a bigger impact than your suggestion.
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That's true but take rugby for example. Say Italy are getting battered off of France, and the score is in no doubt. Italy still have a go because of the bonus point, so while the result isn't in doubt they can at least take something away from the game. Granted, that might be more to do with a different mentality in rugby, but I want to see more teams having a go, like in these Euro championships.

The 0-0 is a good point though and something that needs looking at. Like, emphasis on drawing 1-1 rather than 0-0, since the aim of the bloody game is to score :lol:
 
Top-flight club football has been garbage for a good 10 or so years now, and I've become increasingly disassociated with in that time. National team football was a nice escape as there was less focus on "the system" and more on the players doing their thing. But even that has become mundane now as players are allowed less and less freedom at NT level, as well as the more exciting aspects of football being progressively coached out of modern day footballers. It's a game for the statisticians now.
 
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