With eleven first round games averaging less than one goal a game, ask ourselves, why have so many games been so boring at the Euros?
And we aren’t just talking about England. Our boys aren’t the only team that have been so boring at the Euros.
Although England regularly string over 600 passes a game and lethargically manage to trundle through 90 minutes with less than three shots on target, they aren’t the only woefully uninspiring team at the Euros.
Games featuring talented French, Belgium and Spanish players have also produced underwhelming performances, with Austria and Turkey scoring more goals in one game than France, Belgium and England managed in over four hours of play.
France have blamed Mbappe’s lack of fitness, Giroud’s lack of youth, and Tiram’s lack of ability as an excuse for their lack of goals but they have been as dull as John Major.
We can blame an exhausting domestic schedule ahead of the tournament but the problems with some of the most talented players go much deeper than fatigue and ability, it appears to fall solely at the feet of tactical banality.
Approach with caution.
We all know that Southgate is a fan of Didier Deschamp’s style of possession football, and these cautious, defensive buildups have allowed the smaller, tenacious teams to find a way to adapt and counter the methodical press.
It’s as if Southgate, Deschamps and Roberto Martinez have all been figured out. The teams with inferior talent have been able to penetrate, manipulate and thwart a press of superstars, culminating in games where a low to mid-block has saturated the joy from the terraces.
The games have delivered stats with fewer opportunities to score than Jeffrey Dahmer.
The Poland versus France game had moments when the French midfield looked as if they would play with high intensity and creative fluidity. Just at the moment when it could’ve changed things, the French midfield stalled like Boris Johnson’s plans to build 40 new hospitals when people were wallowing in the corridors of overcrowded hospitals.
France weren’t just cautious; they were almost so safe in their play that they made Ray Wilkins look like Maradona.
Unfit for purpose.
I understand that the focus for France has been an unfit Mbappe, just as England’s focus has been Kane via the stream of Bellingham’s innovation, but when a team can’t find space because they aren’t prepared to create chaos and take risks, the game suffers.
The consequence of a football match without risk and excitement is a dull ninety minutes of a predictable passing series through an arc of lines, higher up the pitch, blocked by a determined nine-man defensive wall.
Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Denmark set up like a fragmented wall expecting a series of free kicks from deep, and Saka, Mbappe, and Doku failed to take players on and get around the back.
Saka is one of the most talented wingers England has ever fielded but he rarely takes on inferior opponents who move like Audley Harrison in concrete shoes. The ball isn’t moved quick enough out of his feet and I don’t know if that’s because the receiving player can’t find the space or if Saka is simply told to hold the ball wide and play it safe.
We keep hearing pundits suggesting that France and England are yet to find their ideal system with the best eleven players and this may be the case for England as we are now hearing rumours that England are considering playing three at the back against Switzerland.
Just like the new government, things have got to change because watching England has been as joyless as a Wilfred Owen poem. However, after the first-round games, you’d expect a manager to know his best side, not still be tinkering with systems and styles in the quarter-final.
The reason why so many games at the Euros have been boring.
The vast majority of the games I have seen in these Euros have been dependent on a moment; a spark; a touch of magic, and it’s not been evident.
The cautious instructions that limit opportunities for the opposition is also the same instructions that suck the entertainment value from the field by restricting the spontaneous moments of chaos that make the game so unpredictable and beautiful.
We often see it in the Premier League – even under Steve Cooper in his last season – when a team manages to counter but the ball is played without any real intent; failing to create space and a shooting chance. Players are then denounced for trying something different and skillful when it doesn’t pay off every time.
Magic Moments of Morgan.
I heard people verbally cursing Morgan Gibbs-White for his tricks and flicks but this is what makes MGW so exciting and dangerous. His creativity is often the difference in a game; a game with strict boundaries that need penetrating with fast, spontaneous play.
Defenders hate speed and they are dazed and incapacitated by skill. The speed and ingenuity of MGW creates goals and this is the element that I believe is missing from the Euros.
I say, let players like MGW do their thing; let Saka show us how good he really is; allow Bellingham a free role that creates space for Foden, and leave the rest to holding players, defenders, the keeper, chance, or sheer luck.
Football is supposed to be an entertaining sport, not a chess tournament. I want to see skill, speed, and moments of sheer madness; goalmouth scrambles, scything challengers and shots from 35 yards from an acute angle.
The reason why so many games have been so boring is because the game has become almost predictable, and only when something different, creative, and unusual happens do we sit up with excitement.
Imagine football without the chaos and the risk, there would be no Hand of God and the heavenly goal that followed; no Socrates running at defences and scoring from acute angles at the near post, and no Zidane headbutt in his last international game for his country.
Without the mindless dismissal of tactical dictatorship, I’m convinced that the games wouldn’t have been so boring at the Euros.
Without the spontaniety, there would have been no John Barnes goal against Brazil in Rio; no Marco Van Basten volley from a ludicrous angle – a shot which should’ve ended in row Z – no run from Michael Owen against Argentina or the Beckham highlights from the same era; no overhead kicks from Ronaldo, Pele’s unhurried pass to Jairzinho in 1970, and certainly no clips of Murillo shooting from his own half and running through the Crystal Palace defence like a deranged Roberto Carlos.
We need these moments for our sanity and we need to be entertained; we need to see games with goals, opportunities and something magical, not endless sideways passing and the utilisation of goalkeepers, as if they are a deeper Franz Beckenbauer.
