Football: Just Slaven Away

[Eggegg]

Man its depressing that Italy won't be at the world cup.. and that Sweden will. Does this mean another major international tournament with a bunch of average sides playing unambitious football endlessly?

[baxus]

Yeah, Italy brought so much excitement and flair to the tournament. Oh, wait...

[Consigliere]

Thing is, even if Italy did qualify, with Ventura at the helm they too look average and play unambitious football. The group stage of the WC is usually boring and predictable anyway.

[Eggegg]

45 minutes ago, baxus said:

Yeah, Italy brought so much excitement and flair to the tournament. Oh, wait...

Haha, yeah but they are at least often interesting. And they do have some great players. Sweden.. UGH

[baxus]

1 hour ago, Eggegg said:

Haha, yeah but they are at least often interesting. And they do have some great players. Sweden.. UGH

I must admit I haven't seen much of Italy in this qualifying round, but for as long as I can remember they have been poster boys for parking the bus, flopping and overall winning by any means necessary.

I won't miss them and don't think World Cup is losing anything with Italy not qualifying.

It would come as a huge surprise to me to find out there are any non-Italians who feel otherwise.

[Philokles]

Seeing as one of Ventura's problems was not realising that 424 was a little too 1950s for the modern game, Italy would likely have been entertaining in Russia with him in charge. But he almost certainly wouldn't have remained in the job that long, so Italy would have been stodgier but better under whoever comes next. Not that the cliché of Italian catenaccio holds up much these days - there are more goals per game in Serie A than La Liga, the Bundesliga or the Premier League (though that likely is due to the much higher number of truly terrible teams at the bottom). 

[Calibandar]

6 hours ago, Eggegg said:

Man its depressing that Italy won't be at the world cup.. and that Sweden will. Does this mean another major international tournament with a bunch of average sides playing unambitious football endlessly?

I'm more upset by the absence of Holland. This Italy team looks quite dreadful.

As do the Swedes btw. 

[Mark Antony]

Italy team didn’t have to be dreadful. Ventura picked an awful squad and even left some of the better players he picked on the bench. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

14 minutes ago, Calibandar said:

I'm more upset by the absence of Holland. This Italy team looks quite dreadful.

As do the Swedes btw. 

Unlike the awe inspiring performances put forward by the Elftal, obviously.

[Rorshach]

At some level, football has moved somewhat back to the catenaccio of old. 

Of course, this is merely a small part of the picture. But right now, a well-organized defensively organized side is more likely to a: exist and b: come further along in qualifiers than before.

The extreme example preceeds us by some ten years: Greece (the dark, dark team that defiled football for a EC). But, lately, Atletico Madrid, Leicester, Iceland, Ireland, Northern Ireland ... all make a case for the well-organized team. 

At times I also find it interesting to watch.

[Mark Antony]

I enjoyed watching Contes Italy in the Euros. 

[Eggegg]

10 minutes ago, Rorshach said:

At some level, football has moved somewhat back to the catenaccio of old. 

Of course, this is merely a small part of the picture. But right now, a well-organized defensively organized side is more likely to a: exist and b: come further along in qualifiers than before.

The extreme example preceeds us by some ten years: Greece (the dark, dark team that defiled football for a EC). But, lately, Atletico Madrid, Leicester, Iceland, Ireland, Northern Ireland ... all make a case for the well-organized team. 

At times I also find it interesting to watch.

I enjoyed the tactics of Ranieri and Simeone, I think its fantastic what they have achieved. The problem is that Greece has become the blue print for most teams in international football. The increase in the number of sides has meant that there is too big a disparity between the top sides and everyone else. So like at the Euros last year the only tactic for many sides was to just sit back and hope for a counter opportunity, stop the other side from playing. Then you have sides like England who literally do not know how to break sides down when they park the bus, because they don't have the skills to do it. So you get utter tedium.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Yes, good cohesive denfending teams are tough to break down. The latest example being Iceland. They are hardly playing interesting football. And there atm not that many international teams that have the overall quality to break down those sides (France, Germany, Spain, and maybe Belgium from Europe. And maybe Brazil and Argentina (with Messi) from the Americas). But it's really not pleasent to watch two solid defensive sides playing each other.

 

[Eggegg]

I don't know what the answer is.  I feel like there needs to be a rule change or something because tournament football in general is becoming rather stale, and has been for a while.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Nope. IMHO this is just a trend atm, and good managers/teams will find a way to play around solid defenses. I mean playing defensively is a perfectly legit  way of playing. It might not be entertaining to watch, but any rule change will just punish smaller teams. I think that's the reason why the 3-5-2 is atm so en vogue and the false nine is falling a bit out of faour, as it offers some different options offensively, compared to the 4-2-3-1.

[Consigliere]

1 hour ago, Eggegg said:

I don't know what the answer is.  I feel like there needs to be a rule change or something because tournament football in general is becoming rather stale, and has been for a while.

At the end of the day there are only a handful of international sides good enough to win a WC and this has been the case for a long time. For most of the rest a well drilled, dogged defense and counter-attack approach is the only way for them to be competitive (see Costa Rica at the last WC). Heck, even Portugal's recent Euro triumph was not achieved with flair but rather hard graft and dogged defending. Any sort of rule change that penalizes this sort of approach in favour of entertaining football is just going to lead to even more one-sided contests. 

[ljkeane]

2 hours ago, Rorshach said:

At some level, football has moved somewhat back to the catenaccio of old. 

I’m not sure I really agree with that in terms of club football. Yeah, there the odd defensively focused teams, and they’re sometimes successful, but I’d say overall it’s probably about as attacking as it’s been for a while.

If you look at the Premier League only one of the top six sides are primarily defensive (United), and City and Liverpool are very attacking oriented. It’s only really Atletico in Spain and while I don’t watch any other European leagues I believe Napoli are top of Serie A playing good football and the criticism I’ve heard of German sides in Europe is they’ve been too naively attacking.

 I think it is a bit of a trend in international football but that’s probably a function of limited time to train and play together. It’s unfortunately a lot easier to put together a solid side playing with limited ambition in a short space of time.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Anyway, back to actual football. Denmark is on course to Russia. Eriksen is apparently really determined to play there next year.

Germany - France is quite a good match. France leads atm.

[Philokles]

The Danes looked really good, not that Ireland put up much resistance. Having two of your most talented players linking up down the right rather than on the bench worked unsurprisingly well. That unshackled Eriksen as he was no longer the only threat to worry about, unlike on Saturday when Sisto was having an off day. Also not punting the ball long to the Cardiff reject up top when you are playing Ireland of all countries.

[Calibandar]

Fantastic goals from Eriksen. As expected, the immense individual class he has makes the difference between these two teams.

 

15 hours ago, Eggegg said:

I don't know what the answer is.  I feel like there needs to be a rule change or something because tournament football in general is becoming rather stale, and has been for a while.

Exactly as you say, stale is the perfect word for the tournaments since, I would say, 2010.

Soulless is the word that comes to my mind. I still look forward to EC's and WC's and yet every time I am left disappointed in the football on display.