Don't believe the hype
Why we all (including Ronaldo) should temper expectations of group stage football at major tournaments. All your Euro 2024 third-place calculations, feinting linesmen in the Copa and so much more....
Yesterday, discussing the latest turgid display from Gareth Southgate’s England, someone asked what seemed to be a pertinent question – Yes, England matches may be pretty dire viewing but how many truly great games have we seen at the Euros or Copa America?
Everyone will have their own answers, depending on loyalties and preferences. There have been good games, moments of drama and some ding-dong battles (think Georgia v Turkey) but perhaps the loaded question was right, we have yet to really see two teams producing entertaining world class football.
But here’s the thing – we really shouldn’t expect elite level football from the group stages of modern tournaments.
The expanded, enlarged, tournaments we are presented with today aren’t designed to deliver top quality because they aren’t designed for that purpose. They are less about the best against the best and more a combination of participation opportunity, fan-festival and revenue play.
UEFA didn’t expand the Euros from 16 teams to 24 to bring us better football, they did it to create more involvement for their member associations (a political win for the UEFA leadership), more games and more money.
This approach has been taken to its extreme by FIFA who will present us with a 48-team group stage at the World Cup in 2026, which will produce a lot of games and a lot of television inventory to simply get us back to 32 teams for the knockout rounds.
Now, before anyone accuses us of hypocrisy, yes, we celebrated the fact that the Euros is packed full of East European nations that are normally frozen out of top-level club competition. That is largely the result of expansion. So we can’t have it both ways.
What we do need to do perhaps, is to temper our expectations. There will be plenty of great football to come before July 14 – both in Europe and in the USA. We will end up with the best playing the best and it will bring us the quality we are perhaps missing right now.
The top teams know they need to pace themselves to give themselves the biggest chance when it matters the most.
Of course there are different ways of going about that. You have the England way and then you have Argentina, who have looked top class in overcoming Canada and Chile without truly hitting top gear.
But ultimately, the only thing that matters in the group stage, is getting out of it. If we currently have a little sense of being underwhelmed it’s probably because the build-up to these tournaments massively over-promises.
If there is one lesson from the Euros and the Copa so far it is simply – don’t believe the hype.
Or, don’t believe the hype of the favorites. Yet.
Another unforeseen byproduct of the ‘Summer of Soccer Saturation’ has been a more pronounced confirmation bias, plus the tournament structures aren’t quite apples to apples.
With six games a day, had you picked Austria vs Netherlands yesterday rather than France vs Poland, skipped Group C, watched the Canada vs Peru game, then switched Chile vs Argentina off after 75 minutes, your take would be markedly different take to having spent half your day watching the dross served up by France and England.
Copa America needs teams to come out of the gate slightly hotter as qualification leads you straight into the quarter finals, while the Euros requires a crash course in pivot tables.
It can’t be that hard to know who you’re playing in the next round, surely?
As an exercise in preventing a drop-off in viewing figures now your country can only be ‘quasi-eliminated’, the UEFA suits are probably feeling rather smug.
It’s not like their job is to really care about the football.
EURO 2024 Round-up
Where to watch: all TV broadcasters around the globe from UEFA
It’s Crunch-Zeit - the final group games played at the same time and it’s all on the line. We still haven’t a clue who is playing who in the Last 16, but we do know who has and hasn’t qualified:
QUALIFIED (11/16): Austria, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland
ELIMINATED (5/8): Albania, Croatia, Poland, Scotland, Serbia
Then we get to third place, ranked by:
1. Points
2. Goal difference
3. Goals scored
4. Wins
5. Lower disciplinary points
6. European qualifiers overall ranking, unless Germany are involved. If Germany are involved, random draw.
Top four qualify:
ESPN seem to be on top of what the devil is going on.
Moving swiftly on to yesterday’s entertainment: Group D
Yes, that’s Ralf Rangnick’s Austria winning the group with a very impressive 3-2 win over the Netherlands, meaning the Dutch could play England in the next round. France limped their way a 1-1 draw against the first team to be eliminated from the tournament, Poland.
Favorites are making a terrible fist of EURO 2024 thus far. Speaking of which…
…on to Group C.
When the most interesting thing to happen in a group is a yellow card given to the assistant manager of Slovenia, Milivoje Novaković, you know it’s been a bad day.
After both England vs. Slovenia and Denmark vs. Serbia finished 0-0, Denmark and Slovenia finished level on points, goal difference, goals scored and yellow cards shown to players. The yellow card shown to Novaković tipped the balance and Denmark qualified in second place, but Slovenia have still qualified for the knockout stages for the first time in their history.
While England aren’t even trying to hit a barn door with a banjo at the minute, they do have the lowest number of shots against in the tournament.
Something, something, defenses winning championships?
And today, it’s Groups E & F
First up, Group E: the one where everybody is on three points, and undoubtedly conspire to all finish on four points as Lukaku has more goals chalked off by VAR in one half than England have scored in the group stages:
PERMUTATIONS: See ESPN
COPA America Round-up
We’ll have to take The New York Post’s word for it that the atmosphere during Argentina’s 1-0 win over Chile at the MetLife Stadium was akin to a Taylor Swift encore, who played there last summer.
And just like Taylor Swift last year, Argentina are the first to qualify for the quarter finals.
Jesse Marsch has his signature win as Canada beat ten-man Peru 1-0 with a Jonathan David goal in the 74th minute. It was all too much for the assistant referee who needed to be stretched off after fainting in the 93 degree temperatures. (Y!Sports)
And today’s games:
In Other Soccer News
EUROPE:
Bolstered by the 2022 FIFA World Cup, revenue in the European football market grew by 16% in the 2022/23 season to €35.3 billion. (Deloitte)
WALES: Thierry Henry is ‘in the frame’ to replace Rob Page as manager. Either that, or Ryan Reynolds has been trying to get him to come out of retirement. (BBC)
USWNT: Emma Hayes isn’t messing around. There is no place for Alex Morgan on the Olympic roster.
Stat of the Day
Phil Foden has passed the ball more times to Jordan Pickford (3) than to Harry Kane (1)
The Daily Soccer Quote of the Day
"I think today I love tennis more than football. It’s unbelievable, I can’t watch football matches, I find them very boring.”
- Ronaldo (the Brazilian one) yesterday, so probably after just watching England…..
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