BERLIN — Here's a statistic: Of the 24 teams competing at Euro 2024, only one, Spain, won all three group games. And here's another: no team lost all three.
There is a level of parity and possibility here that makes major tournaments like Euro 2024 so appealing. Yes, we come for the history, the pride and the anthems, but we stay for the uncertainty that marks most games. In an era when super teams routinely trample the underdogs in club football, the unpredictability of international football is a refreshing change of pace.
An example: Liverpool finished a distant third in the Premier League and still won 63% of their games (24 of 38). Guess who did it No As for the national team, the Spanish have won 63% of their matches, unlike the two Euro 2020 finalists (at least not in the 90 minutes), Italy and England, and Portugal, who won it in 2016 (in fact, most memorably, they only won one match in regular time, against Wales).
We’re so used to the resource inequality and polarisation that characterises league football – Manchester City have won the Premier League in six of the last seven seasons, for example – that all this uncertainty seems a little strange. Of the 36 games played so far in Germany, the teams have been separated by just one goal with 15 minutes remaining in 30 of them. If you like unscripted drama, this is for you.
If you like top quality football with big names and huge talent moving like clockwork around the pitch following patterns of play designed by the best technical minds… well, not so much. International football will never be able to match club football in that regard.
It's not hard to understand why. Club teams work together all year, while international coaches only spend a couple of weeks with their players. That's not enough to put together anything sophisticated or tactically interesting, which is why you see so many basic, off-the-shelf schemes.
Then there's the obvious point: the talent pool available to a national team coach is limited and you can't simply hire more players who fit your vision. Maybe you want an attacking left back, but you will find yourself with a left foot who doesn't like to cross the halfway line. Or, like Serbia with Dusan Vlahovic and Aleksandar Mitrovic, you may have two excellent targets who should play forward alone and have the wingers fill in for them, but since they are two of your best players, you put them in your lineup. , sacrificing system for talent.
It makes no sense to compare the Euro and other international tournaments with the five major European leagues and the gold standard in the game, the Champions League. That should be obvious. The average player you see on the field at the Euros is going to be worse than the guys you see week in and week out during the club season. In Germany, you only need to look at the number of headlines that
Even among the favourites for Euro 2024, there are starters from mid-sized teams. Among the more modest teams in Germany, there are squads with only a couple of players who are regulars in the top leagues.
Now, that doesn't automatically mean they're inferior, but it's a valid indicator of talent, considering that better players tend to end up at better clubs in better leagues.
Compared to club football, international tournaments like Euro 2024 feature less talented players and less sophisticated tactics. But is that really a rejection factor? I would say not.
For example, Spain's victory over Italy was one of the most dominant performances we've seen in the tournament, although it ended 1-0 thanks to an avoidable own goal. That's football. You don't always reap what you sow.
And while the format in which the best third places are classified has its critics (two weeks of football to reduce from 24 to 16 teams seems a bit absurd), there is also a positive aspect: everyone is eligible for a second chance after one bad performance (and sometimes even two).
As a result, with the last 16 starting on Saturday, all the pre-tournament favourites are still alive, with the exception of Croatia, who were tipped as ninth favourites by most bookmakers. And lest we forget, it took a goal in the eighth minute of added time to knock them out. Not to mention the fact that they were thrashed by Spain and could do no more than draw against tiny Albania.
Euro 2024 has left us with a straight knockout involving a compelling combination of traditional box office heavyweights (England, Germany, France, Italy) and minnows (Georgia, Slovenia, Romania, Slovakia) who can have a good run and dream of being Greece. when they won the competition in 2004.
Football is quite unbalanced at club level. There are already too many fans outside the elite pressing their noses against the glass and knowing that they will never compete with the best. The Eurocup is a good antidote to that.
