Idealism is dead – welcome to the age of Applefication of football

Follow today’s live coverage of the semi-final of the Euro 2024 between Spain and France

Big tournaments seem to be the place where idealists die these days.

If you have an ambitious, expansive style or a romantic philosophy, forget it. If you want your football to stand for more than just a match report, forget it. Between the quarter-finals and semi-finals of the European Championships, a cultural correction took place almost overnight.

Up until the quarter-finals, performance was the deciding factor. The “how” behind the victories and progress in the tournament was crucial.

The French were concerned that they had not scored a single goal from open play (and still have not). When a Swedish journalist asked about his team’s style, or lack thereof, at a press conference yesterday, head coach Didier Deschamps replied: “You’re Swedish? No, you’re a French journalist in disguise! If you get bored, watch another game, you don’t have to watch.”

It also bothered the English when Gary Lineker, the former England striker who fronted the BBC’s Euro coverage, said, with some justification, that their team had played “shit” against Denmark in the group stage. Victories were whistled off and plastic cups were thrown at head coach Gareth Southgate after the game, who spoke of an “unusual atmosphere”.

The Dutch, meanwhile, were not happy that their team had emerged from the group as one of the best third-placed teams. “We want to play beautiful football, but that doesn’t always work,” noted coach Ronald Koeman. They had expected more. “It’s tournament football” was not enough. It was no excuse for everything.

But now it is temporary. It is accepted.

Deschamps has reached four semi-finals with France in five tournaments, Southgate’s England has reached three out of four. Koeman has taken the Netherlands to the last four of the European Championship for the first time in 20 years. A threshold has been crossed. The emotional curves have jumped from negative to positive.

Walking around the Soviet Memorial in Berlin’s Treptower Park, one is reminded of the Leninist-Trotskyist versions of the phrase: “The end justifies the means, as long as there is something that justifies the end.” On the one hand, this exposes the fickle, hypocritical and reactionary nature of some of the comments. Football has always been about glory. As the motto of the Italian club Juventus goes: “Winning is not important, it is the only thing that counts.”

Spain was the only exception at the tournament. They were the only ones who aspired to and were able to “vencer y convencer” (Spanish for “win and convince”). Other idealists like Austria’s coach Ralf Rangnick and Italy’s Luciano Spalletti fell by the wayside. “I don’t know how to do it. I think I’m the least suitable person for it,” said Spalletti when asked after their elimination in the round of 16 whether his team, the defending champions, should not have tried to play less football and more “tournament football.”

Luciano Spalletti admitted he could not change Italy’s approach (Alex Grimm/Getty Images)

Spalletti did not adapt in the same way as his predecessor Roberto Mancini did at the last European Championship three years ago. Back then, Italy played an idealistic and countercultural style, dominating possession and pressing high, until Leonardo Spinazzola’s injury in the quarter-final against Belgium, which ended the tournament, changed the team’s emphasis.

Italy, traditionally the greatest exponent of “tournament football”, had to rely more on the heroics of its goalkeepers and the defensive strength of Giorgio Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci towards the end of Euro 2020. But overall, this team, and the Spanish team between 2008 and 2012, have shown that it is possible to win tournaments with a big idea, something more ambitious and grandiose. That was the case in three of the four European Championships before this one. In this context, “tournament football” is the exception, not the rule.

But you can see why tight, dirty and ugly football prevails.

International soccer is increasingly marginalized by club soccer. How much time have coaches had with their players this calendar year before the European Championship and Copa America are taking place in parallel in the United States? The answer is 10 days in March. Ten days in six months. In a nine-month league season, you can rely on the process. In a major tournament that lasts a month, you take everything game by game.

“Every game is different, every strategy is different,” said Turkish coach Vincenzo Montella. “The players I have available before each game are different. I have had to take a lot of criticism recently because I never play with the same starting eleven. But the team you have in mind will not be available for 40 days, the same players will not always be at their best and that does not even take into account suspensions. In today’s game, there is no ideal starting eleven at the end of the season. It is simply not no longer exist.”

Players are exhausted. They are playing more than ever. The European Championship expanded from 16 to 24 teams in 2016. The Champions League has been getting bigger since September this year. In recent years a third European club competition has emerged, the Conference League. Next summer there will be a much bigger Club World Cup. Competition organisers need to sell more games. More games mean more money. But they also mean coaches have fewer training sessions and what little time players have when they are not recovering is often better spent on opposition analysis and set-piece drills than on their own playing patterns.

Most teams look and play the same, finishing in nuanced variations of 3-2-5 in possession. Games are drawn. The intensity level is low. Three of the four quarterfinals in Germany went into extra time.

When spectators complain about boring games, another game begins: the blame game.

Southgate, Deschamps and Koeman, for all their mistakes, are hostages to their own decisions, but also to the context and circumstances. Business spoils the spectacle.

GO DEEPER

The French defence is controlled, disciplined and built on the model of Didier Deschamps

At the Copa America, the press conferences of Uruguay coach Marcelo Bielsa were a bigger spectacle than the actual football.

In the past, South American teams were fresher for the June and July tournaments because their domestic leagues began in February or March, while those of the top European nations began in August. Today, however, almost all South Americans who reach international level play for clubs in Europe.

“There was one game in which the Uruguayan team ran the most,” Bielsa said, “that was a qualifier against Chile. It was in September. Four games in the league season (in Europe). Now they have already played 40 or 50 games (this season). Playing twice a week back then (in September) is one thing. Playing twice a week in the ninth or tenth month… that kind of effort is another thing.”

Bielsa complained that his team had created only three chances in a goalless quarter-final against Brazil, which was ultimately decided on penalties, while downplaying his role in Uruguay reaching the semi-finals of the Copa América for the first time since 2011.

There has been no revolution since his appointment 14 months ago. There was no time for it. “If you ask about the relevance of the changes or what was more important? The changes I made or the profile of the players? I think the profile of the players shaped the team,” said Bielsa.

Today’s game couldn’t have been any different and that makes Bielsa sad.

“I have no doubt that football is on the decline,” he said. “More and more people are watching football, but it is less attractive because we are neglecting what made this game the most popular sport in the world. The way we play now does not protect the spectacle. This is good for business, because business’s priority is to get as many people as possible to watch. But I believe that this trend will soon come to an end.”

“Over time, the number of players who deserve to be watched will decrease and the game will become less and less attractive. This artificial increase in viewer numbers will therefore come to an end. Football is not a five-minute highlight package. It is cultural expression.”

Football has always been about moments. But in the past, it also created movements.

In a pre-globalised age, countries had their own football identities. Today, they all look alike, just like all high streets look alike. It is the Applefication of football.

“More than Americanization, it’s the materialization (of the game),” Zvonimir Boban, the former Croatian international who is now head of football at UEFA, the European football governing body, said recently. Commercialization. Clubs as asset classes. “Executives no longer come from football. They talk about ‘industry’. Those are the terms they use. It’s an ‘industry’. What? It’s not an industry. It’s a sport.”

The industry may be paying its players and coaches better than ever before, but it is also pushing them harder, and the spectacle suffers as a result. The result – unless a World Cup takes place in the middle of the European season in the northern hemisphere winter – is this new version of tournament football.

Idealists might as well join the Dead Poets Society.

GO DEEPER

England is not convincing, but who cares? It’s time to just enjoy the ride

(Top photo: James Gill – Danehouse/Getty Images)