I liked it better when teams represented the style of play of the country they are based on. Now every team is full of foreign managers and foreign players. I think the foreign player limit maintained a sense of identity associated with each club. It forces you to develop your own talent, and the fans are always going to be more into it when players are from the same country as them. Now we rarely ever see teams develop talent.
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Game got too physical and boring. I miss the quality and space
The “centralization” of dominant teams. Now it’s always Bayern, Barcelona, Real Madrid or Man city who 9 times out of 10 wins their respective league. Back in 2000s teams like Valencia, As Roma, Lazio, Parma, Deportivo, Werder Bremen, Zenit Cska Moskva and on won their domestic league and even challenged out in Europe for the UEFA cup or champions league.
Now it’s always the same.
Tbh if Valencia wasnt lead by an idiot of a President they could easily be where Atletico Madrid is right now.
Now football has evolved into much more calculated, rigid game (i personally blame Pep). Remember that Nike ads where real footballers have flairs against robot? That’s what i feel now.
It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but go check out your local 3d or fourth league games. The level is a lot lower, but it’s very fun to watch.
An away goal being worth 2 goals, in the champions league.
It made for some great moments but I also see why they took it out.
The rampant commercialisation and financial gap between the leagues. I miss the time when Ajax or Anderlecht had an actual shot at reaching the last stages of the champions league.
This kills the game for anyone that isn’t Real, Barca, Bayern, PSG or a Prem team now
PSG aren’t in this group. Italian teams have had much more success in recent decades
Imo it all went to shit when too 4 leagues got 4 direct places into the UCL instead of 3 direct and 1 qualification place. lower placed countries used to actually have a chance to qualify and we’d see teams like Qaranag, Maribor and Ferencvaros make the groupstage
It should be the TOP team per league. More prestige for that club, more leagues in the tournament. More chances for other teams to actually win it.
Clubs buying players that never will play one game for the (a)-team but only as investment to loan out and then sell with big profit.
FFP my ass.
This year there was a case like this in Belgium and France.
RWDM Molenbeek, a team that just promoted to the first league bought a 19y old talent for 30 million to everyone’s surprise, smashing the record for highest incoming transfer in the league. RWDM Molenbeek belongs to Group OL Lyon
In reality, this was actually a transfer for OL Lyon who could not buy him due to FFP and they instantly loaned him out to them. RWDM didn’t even announce the signing of the ‘new’ player. How this is possible, is beyond me. Just purely fraudulent and blatantly breaching FFP in my opinion.
New style of play. It’s so robotic now. Every team just recycles play & plays percentages until they overload & get a cut back.
1997-2012 was the peak of football. All elite teams had outrageous players & you had to watch because they could do something amazing.
Now it’s just waiting to see how many cut backs Man City etc can tap in. It’s boring.
Referring to the ‘peak of football’ as literally an entire 15 year period is wild btw
I think people will always refer to the ‘peak of football’ in the period where they were young and experienced the most ‘exciting’ football in their eyes. It’s purely based on nostalgia. I’m not saying 1997-2012 wasn’t wonderful, but someone else would refer to a completely different period and it’s mostly the time where they were between 15-30 years old
This is more likely to be correct yeah. Same reason people always revisit the music they discovered in their teens too
1995 was the peak of football, it all went downhill from 1996.
I feel like 1995 was the peak of EVERYTHING and it all went downhill from there.
Oil money
The possibility for a club to have the majority of their squad born outside of the country.
That alone made possible to the big clubs in Europe just take away the best south americans, leaving our leagues so much worse in comparison.
Take Brazil, for ex: Our best wonderkids after Neymar were all already bought since before they turned 18 (Vitor Roque, Endrick, Rodrygo, Vini, etc).
It was better when nations did not own teams.
Creativity in general. Everything is about being dependable. And I don’t disagree that it wins you more matches. But matches are so boring these days. Just 22 drones trying to execute the plan of the manager.
Loyalty is dead
Awarding FIFA WC to the most deserving
Having to get every offside decision down to the absolute millimeter. Players aren’t machines and engineering an advantage to that level of accuracy, also it just misses the entire reason the offside rule was introduced in the first place. VAR should be able to review possible offsides in real time, without lines and make a judgement based on a simple eye test.
I agree and hate the business side. Not so many years ago, a team mostly depended on its youth system to provide the core of the team. My team is Chelsea and I don’t like what that team has become. I loved Frank’s first year when we were forced to bring young players into the team. We weren’t the best but throughout the team there were connections with the fans. I’m a local, Chelsea or Palace were my main options. Mount, James, Chalobah, Abraham all came into the team.
Now we seem to buy players who are not much better than the homegrown players who are sold to maximize income for FFP.
But is Nicholas Jackson better than Tammy (I know he was sold a while ago) or Disasi that much better than a Chalobah or before that Tomori? Is Cuccurella better than Maatsen (I know he’s Dutch)