mumbo said:
Weasel must be doing cartwheels right now :lol:
Not far wrong. Hand on heart, bar seeing Norn Iron in a tournament for the first time (that I can remember) watching that wee scrote crying as he went off with a wee sore dead leg was the highlight of that tournament for me. Needless to say I turned the TV off the second Clattenburg blew for FT.
I think that final summed the tournament as a whole up. Horribly devoid of entertainment and a complete and utter anti climax. Unless you're Portuguese, obviously. The number of dreadful games was a factor of 5 or 6 times bigger than the number of good games. I'm struggling to think of many good games beyond Portugal Hungary, England Iceland (sorry England fans, even it was only good for the shock value, the game itself was pretty dull after the 25th minute) and France Iceland. The rest consisted of one team defending, the other having 70+% possession and doing less with it than Arsenal on a bad day. That Portugal Poland game is genuinely the dullest game of football I have ever seen. I've said it before and I'll say it again, for games like that UEFA should plant landmines in the pitch and activate them mid way through the second half. If the teams won't provide entertainment then the landmines will!
On the actual structure of the tournament I don't know anyone who thinks it worked. Yes, it was great to see smaller countries getting a chance. My own lot included, although we won our qualifying group so would have been there under the old system. Wales and Iceland were a definite plus for the tournament. BUT, and it's a massive but, three team qualifying from some four team groups DID NOT WORK. Far too often sides settled for a low scoring defeat when previously they would have had to push on to look for an equaliser. They knew one result would probably put them through and level of entertainment suffered. It didn't get better in the knock-out stages either.
Will UEFA do anything? Of course not. If they reverted to 16 teams that would be admitting they made a mistake and we all know UEFA are infallible and never make mistakes. :roll:
I can't see anyway to change a 24 team tournament to remove the safety first approach. If you go to 8 groups of three with the top team going through (or even 2 teams) the problem of defensive safety first football remains. Plus the side that plays second and third will have the advantage of knowing the result between the other two. You can't really go to a group of 6 with 2 or 4 going through because there will be too many games and far too many dead rubbers.
The only realistic option for UEFA, assuming they refuse to go back to 16, is to increase it even further to 32 teams. That way you can have 8 groups of four and the top one or two side progressing. Probably two knowing UEFA. Although that has the further problem of lowering the standard even further. Would those sides that missed out via the play offs (Slovenia, Denmark, Bosnia and Norway) plus four others really have improved the standard or the tournament? I doubt it.
The European Championships used to be the best international football tournament because it was so competitive and the standard of football was so high. That tournament just finished is the worst tournament I can remember, I remember the non stop excitement that was Italia 90!
I suspect UEFA have killed it, but as long as TV keeps paying they won't care.
Rant over.
