TMID Editorial: A forgettable Euro 2024
To say that this year’s Euros may well end up being quite a forgettable tournament wouldn’t be far off the mark – irrespective of who wins the final tomorrow between England and Spain.Hopes were high: teams made up of many of the bi
To say that this year’s Euros may well end up being quite a forgettable tournament wouldn’t be far off the mark – irrespective of who wins the final tomorrow between England and Spain.
Hopes were high: teams made up of many of the biggest stars of world football were coming together in a country where, unlike past major tournaments, there is a full-on footballing culture, to play one of the biggest international tournaments on the calendar.
Yet, the simple fact is that this tournament has been boring to watch. Many of these aforementioned stars have seemed tired and lethargic; the football itself has been slow and laboured.
Many of the top teams misfired: Italy played football so poor that they didn’t even deserve to get to the knockout stages, France were dour and uninspired at best despite being billed as one of the pre-tournament favourites, Germany played themselves into a difficult draw and suffered a disappointing early exit, and even England have been distinctly unimpressive, despite making it to the final.
There have been some bright sparks of course: the Georgians impressed with their brand of never say die football, while Spain’s 16-year-old Lamine Yamal has set the world alight with his performances.
Yet the over-arching feeling is that this tournament has proven a lot of what is wrong with modern day football. The continent’s best players have been squeezed and squeezed until they’ve got almost nothing left to give; they’ve been run into the ground as the footballing calendar gets longer and longer, as the sport’s governing bodies seek to cash in even more on football’s popularity.
Tactically, there is little to no expressiveness left. The footballing revolution of the past decade now means that footballers are encouraged to ditch expressiveness and flair, and chase numbers in what is becoming an increasingly data-driven sport.
This obsession on data has turned footballers into something more akin to robots. Their movements predictable and their decisions practically taken out of their hands as they have to be by the book they’re given.
If one wants to be controversial, one could even draw parallels between this and how society has developed as a whole – how the everyday worker is expected to behave: like a machine, going in from 9 to 5, and not questioning much of what they’re meant to be doing.
Yet in an increasingly grey world where the colourful sparks of inspiration are wearing thinner and thinner, it seems that even the joys of football at the highest, most dazzlingly talented levels are being sapped away.
It remains to be seen who will win out of Spain and England come Sunday’s final. Both are two distinctly different teams, but equally stacked with talent. It has the makings – on paper – of being a spectacle: whether it will be is another matter entirely.
Either way though, this year’s Euros will likely go down as one of the least memorable major tournaments this side of the 21st century – and the only thing to blame for that is what modern football itself has become.
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