Football is not at low quality.
Folk remember it with rose tinted spectacles. Refer back to the list of full backs winning CLs in the mid 00s. It awful and that was CL winning teams.
It's more to do with the fact that footballers (including full backs) seem to be prioritised for pace, athleticism, strength, stamina now, than football abilities.
That's just the way the game has gone. It's also not to say those players lack football ability. It's more a reflection on the game being more micro-managed now.
Some people - like
@malvolio - prefer football from the moderate to fairly recent past (80s/90s-10s). Others - like
@Birdy - subscribe to the view that football like most things gets better over time and right now is the peak of the game - the highest quality it has ever been - and it will continue to evolve and improve.
Myself, I am not fully in either camp. But I do tend to lean more towards malvolio's POV. As people have said it might be nostalgia - but it works the other way too. Recency bias is a big thing and we are constantly told that everything now is the best.
It's weird, because I rate and love Pep as a coach, but he does go a bit too intricate and micro-managed tactically for my liking. I feel players don't have as much freedom now to do what they want (see Grealish) and it hampers some players' potential. Of course, other players have far too much freedom and treat the ball like a hot potato (Bruno Fernandes), but the Portuguese is essentially a 90s player playing in the 2020s.
I just feel there could be more leeway given to players now, that's all. Modern football is still good, but a lot of games bore me. Now, whether that is me getting older and players being young enough to be my son rather than old enough to be my dad, or whether it's because I don't have any tribal bias other than being an ABU, or whether football genuinely is more boring now, is up for debate.
I think a fair point is that the average player is better now, but the very top players of more recent years (Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, Neymar, Modric and Ronaldo and maybe a few others aside) are not as good as the elite players of the past. However, if the average player's floor is higher now, that also makes it tougher now for the best players to get the best of them. So it is hard to say.
Ultimately it is a game of opinions and - for whatever reason - malvolio, myself and Barcaman just don't enjoy football as much anymore. All three of us have quite jaded personalities, and are critical of stuff. But I think there's an element of what I have said above too.
In saying all of this, I am excited for the CL draw tomorrow.
@delancey @Fati_Future_BallonDor @Messi983 @Loki @Don Juan Laporta Estruch @FinBarcelonafan (and anyone else) any thoughts on what I have said?
