I think there's always going to be a nostalgia for the stuff people grew up on and a sense that it's not like it used to be.
The videos touch on a few things, so I'm probably just going to ramble a bit here.
Diving is obviously an issue. Although I feel like these days VAR makes it harder for someone to get away with a complete dive, in the sense of there being no contact. But it does mean that if there is
some contact then it can be played up as much as possible and the potential reward that a penalty can give you means that players aren't going to pass those opportunities up. Trying to "win a foul" is something that is seen far more often now and the ability to do so is even a quality in a player that gets talked about positively by the media and sought out by clubs.
In terms of foreign players, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Football is an international game and players coming together from all over the world to form a team is quite cool to me. I do think it's good for clubs to be part of and represent their community and you do still see that in teams with local players coming up through team's academies. To name a few Manchester United have Marcus Rashford, Liverpool have Trent Alexander-Arnold, Manchester City have Phil Foden, Barcelona have Lamine Yamal, Real Madrid have Dani Carvajal and Bayern Munich have Thomas Muller. I could go on, but you get the idea. A lot of the time these huge clubs who spend vast sums still have players within the squad, often important ones, who embody that club's community. If you're a young kid who goes along to the matches you can look at them and think if they can do it then you could too. I wouldn't claim to be an expert in FFP/PSR financial rules, but my understanding is that investment into the academy is an expense that doesn't necessarily count towards those calculations. So within the game clubs are still very much encouraged to invest in the development of young players and while that can mean ones scouted from all over the world, the core of any club's academy does tend to be youngsters from the local area.
Ticket prices are getting ridiculous and local fans are being priced out of being able to attend each week in favour of tourists who are willing to pay quite a lot for a one off visit. Away fans are also regularly getting gouged by the home club too, which is particularly shitty when it comes to European games for those who are already shelling out a fair bit for flights, hotels etc. Your own club will sometimes subsidise that but it can still price some people out and you risk losing some of that fan culture that brings so much to the game. The Champions League final has something like 50% of its tickets allocated to sponsors and other "VIPs" meaning actual fans aren't really a priority. It's the biggest club game of the year but the atmosphere often isn't great as a result of that ticket allocation.
That first video touches on some cultural/identity issues, particularly in regards to men. I do think football still holds an important place in male culture. Obviously not every guy is into football but if you both are then it gives you an instant talking point. If you're meeting a friend of a friend for the first time on a night out or there's a new guy at your work then "see the game last night?" is a great icebreaker and you can then bond if you support the same team or take the piss out of each other if you don't.
I'm not a fan of how much gambling has crept into football. I saw that this season more than half of the sponsors are related to gambling. Then when you're watching games on TV you're getting a shitload of gambling adverts, ex-players have YouTube shows sponsored by gambling sites, the podcasts have adverts for gambling on them. It's everywhere.
When you look at how they came down on Sandro Tonali like a ton of bricks for gambling it's hard to feel it's not a bit hypocritical. Obviously I get that they need to be careful about players potentially rigging outcomes to win money betting but everyone else around the players seems to be benefitting from gambling.
I'm not going to spend much time getting into the identity politics the first video goes into. The stuff about how the French team aren't really French and "most of them are just from West Africa, some of them not even one generation removed" is pretty moronic. He's even whining about how there's only one white guy in the picture when you can see there are four. Also, if I'm not mistaken, every player in that lineup was born in France. So he's just talking shit. The guy comes across as someone who is more into moaning about identity politics than someone who actually cares about football. If you jump back to the 90s, the French team that won the 1998 World Cup was made up of a variety of ethnic backgrounds. Clutching pearls about "wokeness gone mad" in 2024 or whatever is ridiculous. But it seems like that's the angle that channel goes for.
Then there's the second video, which does seem more genuine in its interest in football.
I do think that individualism has been downplayed a lot in modern football. Now you see a lot more of players being expected to fit into a certain role within a system. These days a lot of clubs prioritise a system with defined roles that people slot into, whether that be the players or the manager. They get brought in because the club identifies them as being able to fill a role and they are then expected to carry that role out in the way that's outlined to them rather than just doing what they feel they want to. Obviously you do always want some structure but it seems like player agency is being decreased in favour of patterns of play. It can obviously be really effective, means that the entire system shouldn't be relying on a single individual to make it work and anyone can be replaced if they get injured, get bought or start asking for too much money. A counter to that kind of system-first approach, which I think it's fair to say Guardiola operates on, is someone like Carlo Ancelotti. Rather than making players conform to the system, Ancelotti looks at the players he has and builds a system around their strengths. He's tactically flexible and places a large emphasis on individual creativity. He's been hugely successful doing that. So there is still room in the game for players to express themselves and the individual to be considered, not just the system. Even with Guardiola, I think it's fair to say that Haaland probably isn't who you would think of as a Guardiola-style #9. But he's an exceptional talent and Guardiola has been able to tweak his system to accommodate that.
There is more of a uniformity in play these days with a lot of teams trying to do similar things. But the thing about football is if you can make it work then it works. If teams want to try and play out from the back and then shit the bed doing so then that's on them. I do think you see a lot more complaining, both from fans as well as figures in the game like players, managers and pundits, that a team doesn't play "the right way." But if a team wants to play a procession style of play and not do much with it and then the other team grabs a goal on a counter-attack in the 89th minute then that's their fault for not being able to make the most of their chances and/or shut down the opponents.
Football is an ever-evolving thing. Even with Guardiola, you see him making tweaks as he progresses season to season. His current Man City team and his first Barcelona one might share overall principles but they are doing things differently from each other on a moment-to-moment basis. At some point the game will move past his ideas, much like they did with Rinus Michels or Arrigo Sacchi. Someone will come along and either evolve it, like how Cryuff built on what Michels established and Guardiola then built on that, or someone will come up with a style that counters it. I'm not claiming to be some tactical expert by any means but from the bits I've read and watched maybe something like Relationism will start to take hold more.
Teams don't play like they did decades ago and I think it's a bit naive to have this "The End Of History" style approach to football tactics that maybe we've just hit the ultimate evolution of football and things are now just going to stay this way forever.
www.neogaf.com
