You know, it would've been a much easier career if there was no one preventing you from scoring. That's my point, players on every position are much more versatile and well prepared than they ever were and this makes the whole game much more difficult. Athleticism surely is a big part of the whole system of the modern game but this doesn't take away any other skills a player might have, it just comes as a prerequisite for showing off his other skills.
Anyway, it's a matter of taste and nostalgia IMO what we're discussing. It's like comparing an old Ferrari and a Tesla. I'd love to watch players like Baggio in the modern game but sadly if you field a team Baggios you'd lose 10-0. After all the aim of any sport is winning and if a formula is performing better it'll naturally take over, no questions asked about aesthetics or what we want to watch.
Well, we have just one great team with just one Baggio-lite that never had the same knee injury issues and he's now considered by many as the best player ever
This is exactly the industrialization I'm talking about.
When this change occurred, you probably do remember it now but did not notice it straight away during, you can see that many teams in Italy and Spain, two of the top 3 leagues, have been fielding some players that wouldn't be around 20 years ago, because they wouldn't make it past the selection phase of their u21. Now there are many talented kids that don't advance because they are not capable of outrunning their peers or rivals. And they just give up, do something else because their parents want them to go study and they end up being part time players at a low level or amateur players with a beer belly and a life of regrets. That's because if you want to become a football player now, you also have to have your family on board from the age of 11 or something. And since it's becoming an expensive sport, you're missing out on good talent because for a family learning a new language or pandering their kids with extra lessons all afternoon is far more important than the slight chance of pursuing a football career which only a small fraction end up being great. And let's not forget the networking that you need even at a junior level in order to be promoted to the next level. Many kids just switch teams or give up because their coaches are friends or uncles of some kid that get better opportunities. This is the reality of football for almost 20 years now in almost every European country.
And who knows, maybe the logic I'm applying would work in reverse. If a team of Baggios wont win nowadays, then surely a team of Vecinos should be a CL winner thirty years ago... We'll never know.
It's a legit argument actually. I think the late 70s have proven that you could pull this off when the English teams were dominating. They had like 1-2 great players and the rest were just athletes with high work rate and they relied on crossing and just pouncing on the ball first. It's football and this is a cycle. Why do you think these guys came up? Don Revie's Leeds United were the main reason. Aka "Dirty Leeds", which is a harsh statement since most English teams played this way. Brian Clough even used a similar style but it was much more 'continental', which is why he was sort of hated over there until he brought European glory to a shit hole, twice. Liverpool was quite different of course, but they still relied on this type. And the English were just better at this than the rest of the world. The Italians and Spanish were shit against this type of play so they struggled a lot. Germans were quite good which is why they also enjoyed some success. And this is also why some Scandinavian (mostly Swedish) and Belgian teams enjoyed success in this period.
Now why did those teams came to be? Ajax and Celtic were the biggest reason. Ajax played this fluid "positionless" football, similar to what we have now and very similar to the sport of handball. Then you had Celtic who played a very attractive style of football that also combined physical strength. That Celtic team was actualy very similar to Klopp's Liverpool. Our Inter team was referenced by some as a "Blitzkrieg" team because of our effective attacking system where the.. cavalry would just pounce on you. You had Facchetti running from the flank towards the middle, Mazzola and Luis Suarez organizing, Corso cutting inside and the striker lurking sideways from the right side. That was the most typical attack we used even if it obviously had variations. The idea was to attack with 7 players and defend with 10. It worked until they forced us to hold the ball further back. We could play the ball from the back to the front, but not with the same ease from very deep. Something that Celtic did to us and their own style of full pitch pressing. How did they stop them? They gave them the ball and the other team started pressing them. It's the history of the sport, it's nothing new. The main difference back in the 70s was that everyone wanted to attack while now the aim is to first not concede. They didn't try to stop Ajax by shutting them down but by trying to outscore them tire them up.
How did that style came to be destroyed? Enter the 80s and the Italian market opened its doors to foreigners. Several South Americans came to Europe this way and their fluid style was fused with the famous Italian defences. It wasn't as dominant but that also opened the door for every country out there to promote its style of football. Eastern European teams in particular enjoyed a lot of success during this period because of their own version of ""joga bonito". That also meant that they brought up more players of that sort and kept bringing up more until the late 90s. Then money entered football and the Bosman rule and the richest teams just collected the best players. Football style was thrown out of the window and money talked. So how do you stop a team like Real Madrid who had the best players in the world? You forced them to not be able to attack. How do you do that? You throw a bunch of Gattusos at them.
If you disagree with this, please name me the top 10 European players you can think of in the 1975-80 period, and you cannot say Cruyff or Beckenbauer who emerged earlier. I'll give you a hint. Allan Simonsen (Danish) and Kevin Keegan(English) were considered the best. It's quite hard to figure out the next. Most of the world's greatest players in that era are considered to be South Americans. Zico was probably the best,
Think of the 60s and 80s, it's far easier to come up with 10-15 top European players. The 2010s are lucky because the South Americans are quite shit but overall I don't think many people will be remembering many players aside from Messi and Cristiano. Surely you can name them now because you're living in this era, but I think it's still easier to come up with elite all time 2000s players than 2010s players. You couldn't argue that Eden Hazard is an all time great for example, but you'd say he's a top 10 name in the decade. Even Luka Modric who is amongst the top doesn't give you the vibe of "all time great", though I believe he deserves to be mentioned.
Anyway. So with the same way they stopped the trequartista in the late 70s by introducing the defensive midfielder, they introduced the "box-to-box" midfielder whose main purpose was to irritate the attacking midielders and then be in a position to attack the opponent. That takes a lot of lungs to pull off, so the football academies who were now everywhere and players didn't learn until they were 14-15 on their own, started adapting. Spain decided to go on a different path and we see them dominating with their possession football, because they have adapted to not be irritated by these players and still move the ball around. That's not a new thing, but perfecting it of course means that they have a higher skill in doing so. Before that, you expected Zico, Baggio, Zidane, Laudrup, Stoichkov, Hagi, Totti, Djorkaeff, Savicevic, Stojkovic and all these players to just get past their defender and then be able to do something with the open space, since the opposition barely had 1-2 of these guys.
At some point this should stop and something else will pop up. But since we live in a football environment where the status quo is persistent (due to FFP, money and several other factors), it will take a lot of time. You cannot make all the kids in the world behave like Spain's academies. That takes 20-30 years to implement and it's not always succesfful as you cannot really produce more than 5-6 really world class players at the same time.
But now for example most teams play with 1 striker. I believe that if football is to change to something more attractive again, we have to have the return of 2 strikers and the #10. These teams now have no idea of how to defend 3 attacking players from the middle, so someone could exploit that and create a trend.
If you also want to talk differences, it's easier to shoot and head the ball now as it was much heavier in the past.
P.S; See, you did it again...
10 years of FIF
Nostradamus
Most Passionate Member
He's not worth even half of that.
okerface:
