Modern Football

[Rudy T]

Was hearing the latest stats produced on how much the game has changed even in the last 5 years. The Pep effect!

Some key things for me where:

One Striker, gone are the days of having two, especially the big man wee man combo.
Considerably less shots from outside the box and as a consequence far less goals.

Less crosses into the box.

Huge increase in the number of passes in a game.

 

Makes me wonder if a coach was to revert back to some of these seemingly outdated ideas if they’d have success with it, seems to be its very much football by numbers with any real flair coached out of the players now.

 

I’m yet to be convinced it’s better to watch for the fans.

[AlimOzturk]

Football like most things has fads. Pep has just adapted the total football strategy employed by the Dutch into a far more effective machine like system. He has always got players and the money to be able to do this.

[tiger Rudi]

For me, it's all about playing to your current squad's strengths. With us, we are definitely NOT Man City or anywhere like it and therefore should play in a way that suits us. If that means launching it occasionally to clear our lines or set up an attack, I'm all for it! 

[Le Chat]

I rarely watch when Man City are on the telly.  Watching them bores the arse off of me.

 

Everyone trying to copy them is ludicrous when their players are infinitely inferior.  Nowt wrong with a keeper shelling a bye-kick down the park or a long ball now and again.

 

And the more shots from distance the better.  Can't beat a good 25-yard screamer.

[Bull's-eye]

All the best teams over the years have had more possession of the ball, the old Liverpool of 70s-80s was no different, Arsenal and Man Utd where the same, this current Man City phenomenon is much the same. If you've got the ball you don't concede and if you do concede you score more. The difference now is parking the bus with an entire team defending the box, that never used to happen. 

 

The blame for the possession based stuff we see now and that includes playing out from the back is because coaches have players drilled in defending and its now up to the better coaches like Pep to break that system down, which they do quite successfully.

 

Not sure why Pep and Man City always get the blame for this change in the game when it's clearly the opposite.

[alanjambo]

The lack of shooting from distance is the thing that really annoys me about modern football, and especially about us at the moment. If the ground is wet and a shot is on, take it; the keeper might well spill it.

 

As others have said, the Pep effect is killing the enjoyment of football and ruining the flair players and individualism. Great team as they are, Man City bore me. Grealish is one of the few flair 'old style' players left and Pep has tried to coach that out of him.

 

Feigning injury and player going down clutching their faces when they've hardly been touched is my biggest annoyance about modern football though.

[Martin_T]

13 minutes ago, Le Chat said:

I rarely watch when Man City are on the telly.  Watching them bores the arse off of me.

 

Everyone trying to copy them is ludicrous when their players are infinitely inferior.  Nowt wrong with a keeper shelling a bye-kick down the park or a long ball now and again.

 

And the more shots from distance the better.  Can't beat a good 25-yard screamer.

 

Yup, I haven't even watched Match of the Day for over a year now. It's boring.

[TexasAndy]

18 minutes ago, Le Chat said:

I rarely watch when Man City are on the telly.  Watching them bores the arse off of me.

 

Everyone trying to copy them is ludicrous when their players are infinitely inferior.  Nowt wrong with a keeper shelling a bye-kick down the park or a long ball now and again.

 

And the more shots from distance the better.  Can't beat a good 25-yard screamer.

I was the same with Barcelona during Pep era.  As good as they were I just found it all drab.  Give me fast attack and counter attack any day.

[Howdy Doody Jambo]

You're only as good as your strikers, the name of the game is scoring goals 

Good player's will always beat shite players no matter what the tactics or formation is 

Nowadays it's not about natural skills and ability of player's it's all about the coach 

[Martin_T]

1 minute ago, TexasAndy said:

I was the same with Barcelona during Pep era.  As good as they were I just found it all drab.  Give me fast attack and counter attack any day.

 

Yup found it especially pleasing when they started coming undone against the dynamic Gegenpressing of the top German sides, until Pep went to Bayern and Guardioaled everything across there.

[Martin_T]

Football peaked at Euro 2000, dynamic football, goals, star power, it had everything. It's been downhill since.

 

 

[HamishMcGonagall]

Funny, I just read this article on the BBC - 'The Slow Death of the Screamer'

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/extra/7ruba7shs4/the-slow-death-of-the-screamer

[Gordon Zola]

1 hour ago, Rudy T said:

Was hearing the latest stats produced on how much the game has changed even in the last 5 years. The Pep effect!

Some key things for me where:

One Striker, gone are the days of having two, especially the big man wee man combo.
Considerably less shots from outside the box and as a consequence far less goals.

Less crosses into the box.

Huge increase in the number of passes in a game.

 

Makes me wonder if a coach was to revert back to some of these seemingly outdated ideas if they’d have success with it, seems to be its very much football by numbers with any real flair coached out of the players now.

 

I’m yet to be convinced it’s better to watch for the fans.

👍

[Shooter McGavin]

Does feel like the game is overcoached, overcomplicated and data driven, which has had a hugely negative effect on the entertainment value. Watch any throwback game, and it's night and day compared to what is dished up now.

 

There's a trend right now of "prime Barclays" premier league clips doing the rounds, and it was definitely a great era, now it's just dull.

 

The 2014 Nike World Cup advert has sadly become reality...

[OmiyaHearts]

One thing is for certain, modern football at top level in most countries is not good to watch. No hard tackling, VAR interruptions, music after goals, possession seems more important than actually creating chances. The list goes on. 

 

The football experience nowadays is not worth it, especially given the cost. Scotland v Switzerland was the last game I went to and probably last pro game I'll ever attend.

Edited September 12 by OmiyaHearts

[Ally]

Not to mention clubs in England seeing 'Top 4' as a bigger thing than winning the FA Cup.

[Threedoorsdown]

It’s not just football. Modern life is so data driven that I feel like half my life is controlled by algorithms.

[Turkishcap]

4 minutes ago, Threedoorsdown said:

It’s not just football. Modern life is so data driven that I feel like half my life is controlled by algorithms.

As Leonard Cohen sang, I've seen the future it is murder.

[Ribble]

29 minutes ago, Shooter McGavin said:

Does feel like the game is overcoached, overcomplicated and data driven, which has had a hugely negative effect on the entertainment value. Watch any throwback game, and it's night and day compared to what is dished up now.

 

There's a trend right now of "prime Barclays" premier league clips doing the rounds, and it was definitely a great era, now it's just dull.

 

The 2014 Nike World Cup advert has sadly become reality...

 

We won't ever see anything in football get close to December 2006's Goal of the month competition

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhYLwinj-kI

 

[King prawn]

2 hours ago, Le Chat said:

I rarely watch when Man City are on the telly.  Watching them bores the arse off of me.

 

Everyone trying to copy them is ludicrous when their players are infinitely inferior.  Nowt wrong with a keeper shelling a bye-kick down the park or a long ball now and again.

 

And the more shots from distance the better.  Can't beat a good 25-yard screamer.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/extra/7ruba7shs4/the-slow-death-of-the-screamer
 

Read this yesterday which covers perhaps why we don’t see as many  

 

Definitely feels like we’re set up to play this way at the moment, no one has a shot. 

[FERRY HEARTS]

Give me the Big Match revisited any day !

a lot of these clowns could do with an old orange dimpled Mitre battered up their arse 

[SectionDJambo]

2 hours ago, Bull's-eye said:

The difference now is parking the bus with an entire team defending the box, that never used to happen. 

I'm assuming that you weren't around to see Pat Quinn's East Fife team in the 70s. It was brutal to watch them at Tynecastle, but he got results that kept them in the 1st Division, of the time, at least for a while.

I remember a game, at Tynecastle, when we eventually got a wee break against them and scored very late on to go 1-0 up. It had been purgatory to watch, standing in the cold, but we were all happy to have managed to win. Then they went up the park, for probably the first time in the match, and equalised in the last minute.

It was typical of our Hearts team to let that happen.

Happy days? 

[Fitzroy Pointon]

16 minutes ago, Ribble said:

 

We won't ever see anything in football get close to December 2006's Goal of the month competition

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhYLwinj-kI

 

 

I still maintain Pinilla's goal v. Aberdeen is the best I have seen in the flesh but that aside, give me a 25 yard screamer any day of the week. 

[Ally]

13 minutes ago, FERRY HEARTS said:

Give me the Big Match revisited any day !

a lot of these clowns could do with an old orange dimpled Mitre battered up their arse 

Weird - that's what I nicknamed mine as well!

[DG_HMFC]

Having only 1 striker is good if you have other players chipping in.

 

We don't have that luxury and could probably benefit from playing 2 strikers.

[Ribble]

2 hours ago, Martin_T said:

Football peaked at Euro 2000, dynamic football, goals, star power, it had everything. It's been downhill since.

 

 

That would have been the last Euro's prior to Managers needing to have the UEFA Pro License, if every manager has the same training/qualification is it any wonder that innovation within the game has become stagnant? 

 

The most recent example of a young innovative manager was Will Still and his club were fined every single match because he didn't have his coaching badges

[1953]

Keeping possession is fine as you don't lose goals when in possession. The difference between us and the top English teams is that the they have the players who can pass the ball across the back perhaps twice then move it through midfirels and be on the oppositions box a few seconds later. We have players that pass it side to side and struggle to move it forward. It's not a tactic that we're good at but we still do it. 

[Luckies1874]

3 hours ago, Rudy T said:

Was hearing the latest stats produced on how much the game has changed even in the last 5 years. The Pep effect!

Some key things for me where:

One Striker, gone are the days of having two, especially the big man wee man combo.
Considerably less shots from outside the box and as a consequence far less goals.

Less crosses into the box.

Huge increase in the number of passes in a game.

 

Makes me wonder if a coach was to revert back to some of these seemingly outdated ideas if they’d have success with it, seems to be its very much football by numbers with any real flair coached out of the players now.

 

I’m yet to be convinced it’s better to watch for the fans.

The far less goals is simply untrue. 
 

In 2 of the last 3 seasons the EPL has seen the most and 3rd most goals ever scored in a 38 game top flight season in England, averaging over 2.8 goals a game. 

[RustyRightPeg]

Pep has evolved football to something it’s never been but IMO ruined it as a spectacle. 
 

The thing that has really ruined football for me are stat nerds. XG, completed passes and things like pressures escaped. What a pile of shite. 

[Bull's-eye]

12 minutes ago, DG_HMFC said:

Having only 1 striker is good if you have other players chipping in.

 

We don't have that luxury and could probably benefit from playing 2 strikers.

 

Your missing the point completely,  modern football is about defending. More men in midfield destroying the play. Move around the pitch in groups and pretty much stifling any individual talent.  

It's the individual talent that's missing because it's all about shape and nullifying the opposition. 

 

It used to be about scoring,  now it's the opposite.

[Martin_T]

2 minutes ago, Bull's-eye said:

 

Your missing the point completely,  modern football is about defending. More men in midfield destroying the play. Move around the pitch in groups and pretty much stifling any individual talent.  

It's the individual talent that's missing because it's all about shape and nullifying the opposition. 

 

It used to be about scoring,  now it's the opposite.

 

Perhaps more accurately, it's about statistical margins. Don't shoot from long range because more goals come from inside the box. Have all players back to defend at corners because less goals are conceded that way, don't put corners direct into the box etc etc.

 

No spontaneity, innovation or excitement. Dull.

[Lord Beni of Gorgie]

Watched the Damned United again recently, the opening sequence of mudbaths and punch ups, you gotta love it.

 

Data and familiarity are probably as much to blame to be honest.

[gregzy2k7]

The thing that I hate about the modern game the most Is all the over coaching that happens nowadays imo,

 

Imagine in the 80s trying to tell Maradona to get back and defend instead of giving him the freedom of running and dribbling at players and scoring goals.

 

To a lesser degree, I think a certain Rudi Skacel fits this bill, a player who you simply cannot over coach, you just have to let him do what he does and other players will have to cover for him.

 

All this structure and being in shape all the time and having to do more than one role in the team does my t!ts in tbh, it's meaning that all the enigma type players that win you matches out of thin air are starting to dissappear, which is a real shame to see.

[Martin_T]

1 minute ago, gregzy2k7 said:

The thing that I hate about the modern game the most Is all the over coaching that happens nowadays imo,

 

Imagine in the 80s trying to tell Maradona to get back and defend instead of giving him the freedom of running and dribbling at players and scoring goals.

 

To a lesser degree, I think a certain Rudi Skacel fits this bill, a player who you simply cannot over coach, you just have to let him do what he does and other players will have to cover for him.

 

All this structure and being in shape all the time and having to do more than one role in the team does my t!ts in tbh, it's meaning that all the enigma type players that win you matches out of thin air are starting to dissappear, which is a real shame to see.

 

I guess the flipside re Maradona is that the phyicality allowed back then allowed for some brutal defending to say the least.

[Rudy T]

15 minutes ago, Luckies1874 said:

The far less goals is simply untrue. 
 

In 2 of the last 3 seasons the EPL has seen the most and 3rd most goals ever scored in a 38 game top flight season in England, averaging over 2.8 goals a game. 

Not from outside the box tho.

[Rudy T]

Just now, Martin_T said:

 

I guess the flipside re Maradona is that the phyicality allowed back then allowed for some brutal defending to say the least.

 

I saw a highlight reel of him against England the hand of god game, I remember watching it at the time but didn’t realise how many assaults he endured during the game.

[A_A wehatethehibs]

I think it’s the ipads and data science,  statistics, playing the percentage game. It isn’t pep, the rise of tech has coincided with pep. Gone are the days of the unpredictable, the Matt le tissier, Riquelme or a Berbatov types. Those players don’t exist any more players today are like robots playing eye bleeding percentage var ball. The top clubs just do the same football but faster because they have better players.

[indianajones]

Pep ball is extremely effective but I find it incredibly boring to watch. 

 

It's even worse when a team like Hearts attempt it. 

[Rudy T]

17 minutes ago, RustyRightPeg said:

Pep has evolved football to something it’s never been but IMO ruined it as a spectacle. 
 

The thing that has really ruined football for me are stat nerds. XG, completed passes and things like pressures escaped. What a pile of shite. 

Im going to be honest that XG stat baffles me and seems a complete waste of time.

 

You can have one or two shots on goal in 90 minutes and still win the game so what does it matter how many your expected to score. 

[darrenold]

Have the amount of goals gone down, is that a fact?

 

 

[Spongebob]

It’s shite !!!

[Corstorphine Jambo]

1 hour ago, Ally said:

Not to mention clubs in England seeing 'Top 4' as a bigger thing than winning the FA Cup.

I know a few fellow Jambos who would prefer a Euro run to a League Cup win. They reason that it’s more money for group stages in Europe. Personally I just love the memories from a cup win - they far outweigh the few big pumpings we took last time!

[Ally]

9 minutes ago, Rudy T said:

Im going to be honest that XG stat baffles me and seems a complete waste of time.

 

You can have one or two shots on goal in 90 minutes and still win the game so what does it matter how many your expected to score. 

Glad it's not just me. What exactly does it mean, anyone?

[Ally]

1 minute ago, Corstorphine Jambo said:

I know a few fellow Jambos who would prefer a Euro run to a League Cup win. They reason that it’s more money for group stages in Europe. Personally I just love the memories from a cup win - they far outweigh the few big pumpings we took last time!

 

Probably the same types who talk about Manchester United or Liverpool as 'we/us' when discussing the EPL.

 

Ironically, the only template for a more equitable set of circumstances comes from the closed shop of North American 'major' leagues, with salary caps and the league itself being more important than the individual franchises. Not perfect, however.

[A_A wehatethehibs]

6 minutes ago, Ally said:

Glad it's not just me. What exactly does it mean, anyone?

expected goals. It looks at the quality of the chance in the equation. So, yes you had a shot, but was it 5 yards out or 30 yards out? You’ve got higher probablility of scoring with a shot from 5 yards. So the xg is higher. There’s a lot more complexity to it but that’s basically it. And at the end of the game it’s the number of goals you should’ve scored, or at least that’s the way it’s looked at 

Edited September 12 by A_A wehatethehibs

[darrenold]

What makes a great game of football??

 

.Goals / goal mount action/ hitting woodwork/ saves

. Dribbling 

. Tackles ( some of them fouls)

. Crosses

. No var issues 

 

All these things apart from crosses seem to be drying in the modern game.

[A_A wehatethehibs]

1 minute ago, darrenold said:

What makes a great game of football??

 

.Goals / goal mount action/ hitting woodwork/ saves

. Dribbling 

. Tackles ( some of them fouls)

. Crosses

. No var issues 

 

All these things apart from crosses seem to be drying in the modern game.

Another one for the list is Poor defending. Defenders today are too good, too competent, they stay on their feet, delay you, react to the ball not the man. They never make rash idiotic tackles anymore unless your name is Ryan porteous 

[Japan Jambo]

2 hours ago, Shooter McGavin said:

Does feel like the game is overcoached, overcomplicated and data driven, which has had a hugely negative effect on the entertainment value. Watch any throwback game, and it's night and day compared to what is dished up now.

 

There's a trend right now of "prime Barclays" premier league clips doing the rounds, and it was definitely a great era, now it's just dull.

 

The 2014 Nike World Cup advert has sadly become reality...

 

well remembered, forgot all about that! Worth a watch again...

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=2014+world+cup+nike+advert&rlz=1C1GCEA_enGB1075GB1075&oq=2014+world+cup+nike+advert&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIICAEQABgWGB4yCggCEAAYgAQYogTSAQg4OTQyajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:b472b98a,vid:taxldmY8V-Y,st:0

[darrenold]

5 minutes ago, A_A wehatethehibs said:

Another one for the list is Poor defending. Defenders today are too good, too competent, they stay on their feet, delay you, react to the ball not the man. They never make rash idiotic tackles anymore unless your name is Ryan porteous 

Not sure.  Some terrible defending still happens.

 

 

[Le Chat]

33 minutes ago, Rudy T said:

 

I saw a highlight reel of him against England the hand of god game, I remember watching it at the time but didn’t realise how many assaults he endured during the game.

 

In the 1982 World Cup Argentina played Italy when Maradona was about 20.

 

Every time he got the ball he was basically assaulted by the Italians (Claudio Gentile in particular).  Nowadays, half of their team would (rightly) be sent off.

 

The fact Maradona was able to do what he did, whilst putting up with the type of treatment he got in pretty much every game he played, makes him the GOAT in my opinion.  Messi and Ronaldo didn't have to put up with a fraction of what Diego did.