What an absolute dissappointment Euro 2024 was..

BrilliantOrange

Full Member
Joined
Sep 13, 2018
Messages
1,546
Supports
Ajax Amsterdam
I mean really... Looking back at this tournament.. What's there to actually to look back to? Is there anything really significant worth looking back to? What and who will we remember for this tournament?

Looking at the performances per country countries..
- France, England, Portugal were incredibly disappointing.. So much quality, but such a negative, defensive, boring style of football..
- Belgium and Italy are in a generational low-tide currently and not by force of making real impact..
- Germany and The Netherlands had their moments, but were mostly underwhelming..
- Spain is the only country who lived up, played attractive football, entertained and delivered actual quality..
- For the rest Austria, Turkey, Georgia caught some attention and they did well, but let's not pretend they were all THAT good.. They had an attractive style of play and/or some individual quality which was refreshing and surprising, but they are still mediocre at best..

Many many stand out individual stand out performances have we seen over the whole tournament? Rodri, Williams, Lamal stand out for Spain.. Maybe Guler?

How many really good memorable games have we actually seen? I mean for real...? Turkey Georgia? Croatia Italy? Germany Spain?

How many really good memorable goals have we actually seen? Yamal? Guler? Calhanoglu?

Apart from that there were so many insignificant tactical games without any tension in the group stages due to the setup with the best numbers 3 also going through..

Thank feck for Spain for saving the Euro's a little bit, but overall.. Damn this was an uneventful forgettable European Championship..

(or am I wrong?)
 
I enjoyed it more than 2016 though 2020 was a lot better. 16-team Euros are still the gold standard.
 
I was telling my friend the same thing this morning – I never got excited about this Euros. The entertainment level was low, the players looked tired, and most teams were set up defensively. It was such a disappointing tournament (at least for me)...
 
Some super talented younger players properly 'announced' themselves on the international stage, which was fun to watch. In general, the older, more established 'names' had disappointing tournaments. I didn't attend any of the games, but know a few England fan regulars who did and they all said that this was the most fun tournament to attend with by far the best atmosphere for quite some time (the last few have in fairness been a bit weird for various reasons) - the fan experience doesn't really come across on TV, though.
 
The format was trash but it was a decent tournament.

Great and deserving champion who played nice attacking football
Lots of matches between the top teams largely involving Spain
Good young stars who emerged such as Yamal, Mainoo, Palmer etc
Some spectacular moments such as the Bellingham overhead kick and the Yamal screamer
Decent crowds and not too much nonsense off the field.
 
I really don't think it was as bad as many people make it. 117 goals scored is not close to 142 scored in Euro 2020, but better than 108 in Euro 2016.
BrilliantOrange said:
Many many stand out individual stand out performances have we seen over the whole tournament? Rodri, Williams, Lamal stand out for Spain.. Maybe Guler?

How many really good memorable games have we actually seen? I mean for real...? Turkey Georgia? Croatia Italy? Germany Spain?

How many really good memorable goals have we actually seen? Yamal? Guler? Calhanoglu?
Click to expand...
I think there were quite a few memorable and exciting games, often coming from unexpected teams. It's a shame Germany - Spain was so early, as it would be a worthy final. And the tournament saw many great young players get their first minutes at the major tournament - Yamal, Bellingham, Mainoo, Guler, Wirtz.

Many good players showed themselves to the world and increased their value - Kadıoğlu, Olmo, Nico Williams.
 
After the World Cup, it’s very evident that the continental cups lack that magical aura it has. I haven’t been more meh about a Euro as I was this time. The tournament itself was alright - the two supposed favourites playing poor football didn’t help.
 
Felt the same way about the world cup. International football is dead.
 
It was okayish, but could be better, if England had a slightly more demanding opponents on the way. This would perhaps motivate them more to prefer attacking stance.

Not gonna complain much, especially with Copa America as parallel, which is almost always crazy good.
 
I thought the first few days was great then it fell off a cliff massively.
 
I don't like that so many of the usually most exciting teams have such boring and/or shite managers currently

Southgate, Dechamps, Koeman, that Italy manager... boring, pragmatic bastards the lot of them. Roberto Martinez is shite too.

Get Zidane, Mourinho etc in and you'll notice a big change.
 
Wouldn't go that far - ultimately loads of high-stakes football was on my TV pretty much everyday, and that's never a bad thing.

One big plus from the Euros for me was the so-called smaller teams showing that the gap between them and the "big" teams isn't as big as you'd think - and that actually the argument for a 32 team Euros is probably stronger then moving back to a 16 team Euros.

mu4c_20le said:
Felt the same way about the world cup. International football is dead.
Click to expand...

Social politics aside, the World Cup was great.
 
It was actually a decent tournament that will be fondly remembered for the emergence of unusually large number of youth stars. And while not all of them will become household names, some of them certainly will.
 
I know there’s a draw etc, but could some form of seeding be applied to the tiers - points for haircuts - goal celebrations - goals scored, even? Might help avoid lucky chancers/bad haircuts getting deep into the last stages, and the real final happening in the quarter finals.
 
It was a bit like Euro 2016 in that a lot of the traditional heavyweights simply weren't up to much. Spain were basically the only ones, and even they were clearly a step below the level of their World Cup winning side.

Germany growing into a new generation. France in a bit of a transitional phase. Italy, Netherlands and Portugal not really that great. Belgium just a bit crap. England managed by Southgate.

There were no real underdog stories either, which Euro 2016 at least had going for it.
 
Overall it was woeful crap for the most part.

Needs a rethink, I think 48 teams should do it.
 
LawCharltonBest said:
I don't like that so many of the usually most exciting teams have such boring and/or shite managers currently

Southgate, Dechamps, Koeman, that Italy manager... boring, pragmatic bastards the lot of them. Roberto Martinez is shite too.

Get Zidane, Mourinho etc in and you'll notice a big change.
Click to expand...
Mourinho leading England vs Spain... Think this could be one of the most interesting finals of couple of decades.
 
Shit tournament really, Germany and Spain were pretty decent and Swiss and Austria did very well but the rest was toss.
 
Started off well but tailed off hard by matchday 3 and now I barely remember what happened during the tournament.
 
Yeah, it wasn’t much of a spectacle as a tournament.

UEFA seem hellbent on making their competitions more complicated for the sake of extra games and extra revenue. It all starts with that 3rd place bullshit.

I daren’t imagine how bad the Champions League will be in its new format.
 
I had a good time watching it. Sure, it's not great football but it's between this and no football until the season starts.

Whilst the KO round games are mainly cagey, they had big stakes and was fun to watch.
 
From an Fan atmosphere POV, I think it was one of the best tournaments ever. The "Fans First" System allowed a lot of true National Team fans from every country to watch their games live in the stadium.
 
First round was awesome, rest was cack.

Georgia Portugal was a fun match as was Turkey Austria.

The rest was cack.

And Spain won, which is also cack.

Cack.
 
Austria, Romania,Turkey, Georgia, Germany and Switzerland made the group stages a decent watch even if in the knockout rounds they ran out of steam and Spain were good throughout.
 
I actually enjoyed it very much.

There were breakaway teams playing nice football - Switzerland, Austria, Turkey, Romania.
On the opposite end we saw the decline of Croatia, Italy, Portugal, Belgium.
There was more than enough last minute drama. Unfortunately the two streams were not entirely equal in terms of strength on paper.
We saw more than a couple of good goals.
And we got to see some really interesting players. If you ask me we should look more in depth at that Ferdi lad from Turkey, seems better than Malacia at least, reminds me a lot of Shaw and Carvajal.
No off-field nonsense.

For a summer tournament, starting right after the last season with most of the players having played 30+ games I'd say it was good enough.
 
As someone who followed mostly Spain, I thought the tournament was entertaining and the champion turned out to be one of the most convincing ever: 7/7 wins, no penalty shootouts, beat Croatia, Italy, Germany, France and England, had several amazing players having an excellent tournament like Rodri, Fabián, Yamal, Williams, etc
 
I thought it was alright. Football is going through a transitional period of the old guard into the new. A lot of national teams do seem to be devoid of talent even if apparently football is better than ever.
 
32 teams is the only logical answer going forward. Georgia who qualified from a tier C through Nations League provided some of the most entertaining football. We have big footballing nations missing out like Sweden, Norway, Greece, Ireland so the quality of opponents should be right about the same.

This some 3rd seat qualifications just adds to caution and poor games. After the groups the 1st should be drawn against any of the 2nd places. That would lead to teams actually trying to win more games and not settling for 2nd when you know what opponent lies infront of you.
 
Yeah, it was really underwhelming. No direct free kicks or hat tricks scored but a lot of screamers in the group stages.
 
It was shite but again, like the last Euros, the best team in the tournament won it with good football and that's the only interesting point for me in the debate about attacking vs defensive football and which is best for tournaments. On the flip side Germany and Austria played some good football and only reached the quarters before crashing out.

I've seen some criticism on here of Italy's win in 2021 but they genuinely played some really good football at times and Spain have shown it this year. It can be done (looking at you Deschamps and Southgate)
 
cafecillos said:
As someone who followed mostly Spain, I thought the tournament was entertaining and the champion turned out to be one of the most convincing ever: 7/7 wins, no penalty shootouts, beat Croatia, Italy, Germany, France and England, had several amazing players having an excellent tournament like Rodri, Fabián, Yamal, Williams, etc
Click to expand...
That’s a mighty impressive list of teams they faced (& beat). Deserved champions.
 
Kopral Jono said:
16-team Euros are still the gold standard.
Click to expand...

The more teams and games, the more exhausted the players will be and the lower the standards drop. Too bad UEFA and FIFA keep expanding all the tournaments for club and country to filler their coffers.
 
Crap tournament for the most part, games involving Spain were the only ones I enjoyed out of the ones that I saw. Never been less motivated to put games on, that could be an effect of Utd's season, in fairness.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.