How has football changed in the last 20 years?

[dww]

Prompted by the bringing up of the Fergie example in the Rafa debate. Has football in any fundamental way changed since the early nineties or indeed any pre-professional era.

I think the way the media interacts with the game has changed and the English game has been revolutionised by the influx of money and foreign training regimes. However I kind of feel that the great Milan team of the early 90s would still of been the best team in the world and fundamentally most things needed to be enormously successful on the pitch are much the same as they were then.

However on average athleticism seems to have become more important and creative skill more so. Quick reactions rather than invention are now better rewarded.

Any one else have any thoughts?

[The_weatherman]

I feel football has changed too much, players are getting too powerful and the money involved is also too much. I think the EU has inadvertantly played it's part in the demise of football, with it's rules about contracts and so on, it's football FFS, and they get paid alot so they should commit for a certain lenght of time without problems.

The media hypes up English football way too much.....we have other leagues as well and I think the media and money in England might have a negative effect in the coming years, I notice I'm getting bored of the english football as a whole and am looking more and more at Spain.

Then there is the change on the field, I think that goes in circles, there come times when everyone prefer one up top and then we go back to 4-4-2. Everone want's big players but then we go back to short, skilful players like Messi. I think the game is developing now again towards the skilfull fast players which could mean Rafa will be left behind or what? I´m just thinking outloud here though......

[tsb]

Mo' money, mo' problems.

[AFII]

The biggest change is that players at the top clubs need to keep themselves fit, a very strict diet, more detailed training and so on.

The players are now stronger and fitter that in return means that a short player will get it even more difficult.

You only need to look at the big attacking stars in the PL, Torres, Drogba, Ronaldo, Tevez, Rooney, Adebayor, Van Persie, Berbatov and Anelka. All of them are very strong and athletic.

If you are short then you need to be built like an ox to survive.

[-V-]

The biggest change is that players at the top clubs need to keep themselves fit, a very strict diet, more detailed training and so on.

The players are now stronger and fitter that in return means that a short player will get it even more difficult.

You only need to look at the big attacking stars in the PL, Torres, Drogba, Ronaldo, Tevez, Rooney, Adebayor, Van Persie, Berbatov and Anelka. All of them are very strong and athletic.

If you are short then you need to be built like an ox to survive.

Eh?????

You mean short and skinny stars like Mascherano, Pennant, Aaron Lennon, Robbie Keane, Cole, Fabregas etc etc etc

You dont have a point here. Fitness is fitness

[Harv]

More money has become involved, therefore its alot more crucial for teams to get results........ipso-facto! We get boring defensive football

[Guest]

Yes, but Arsenal and Manure play with flair, and we sometimes do it, albeit in patches.

[Harv]

Yes, but Arsenal and Manure play with flair, and we sometimes do it, albeit in patches.

we can play some great stuff..but how many times do you actually see both of our CM's make runs into the box? Never. We (and the majority of the league) just have too much riding on the results to play a gung-ho brand of football these days.


even as far as 5 years ago (pre Abramovich) the EPL was fantastic to watch. Nowdays its often pretty ordinary IMO.

Although i love watching Villa TBH, they have pace, and throw everything at the opposition. Im genuinely worried by them in the coming years. MO'N is a great manager for this league.

[AFII]

Eh?????

You mean short and skinny stars like Mascherano, Pennant, Aaron Lennon, Robbie Keane, Cole, Fabregas etc etc etc

You dont have a point here. Fitness is fitness

I was talking about excellent attacking players(strikers).

[Slim]

The Premier League is less competitve now than the top flight used to be. Let''s face it, if Abramovich hadn't have come along it would pretty much have been Man U and Arsenal competing for the legaue every year (except the one season Blackburn won the league) for the last 15 years. Even when we dominated football other teams like Everton, Villa, Forest, Leeds even Derby in the 70s could win the league. Our closest challengers in the 80s at times were teams like Watford and QPR. That could never happen now.

[dww]

Do these things really affect the way in which a club should be managed or the tactics that are effective?

We have seen for example on the international stage Argentina fly in the face of everyone else's arms race for the biggest most athletic players and concentrate on smaller more skillful players and be pretty successful.

I think if we aknowledge the fact that finance is having a big impact you have to think that teams like Man City and Spurs (for example) stand a chance of overtaking us. If we assume that we all believe that we have a chance of any sort of winning the league then surely if they did that then they too would have a chance at the league? I do ultimately agree with you though that despite the signs in the FA cup less teams have a realistic chance of winning domestic competitions than did in the 70s/80s.

[Slim]

I get your point about how has this changed tactics and management if at all? I suppose different styles of play become popular at different times regardless of the money element, for example playing 3 at the back and 2 wing backs was all the rage in the 90s, and I'd like to think that the basics of the game and what will be successful remains the same despite the influence of money. For example, with the whole '39th Step' debate it has been bandied about a lot that the game is technically superior now in the top flight to pre-Premier League days as more money has led to the arrival of the better foreign players. But I'm not sure that is strictly true. The Liverpool side circa 1988 played superb, technically sound, attacking football, and I think would give any of the tams in the PL now a run for their money. If the league is so much better now why have Premier League clubs only won the Champions League twice since the PL's inception?

I think what has changed though, is money has led to the richer teams having bigger squads with more strength in depth and therefore the gap between the teams at the top and even the teams outside say the top four or six even, is growing. The vast majority of sides in the PL know that they really cannot win any of the domestic trophies at the start of each season, and for about half the table the goal is to make sure they stay up as the financial costs of relegation coupled with player’s wages means that going down is a total disaster. I think that this in turn does influence the football played and tactics used as teams are more afraid to play an attacking game and take a risk.

[PLY]

Players have become a bunch of whinging girls who want their own way and the fans are not far behind them. If it's not 4-0 after 45 mins half of them have a tantrum.

[alunevans]

Everyone is more interested in which corporation we sign to take control of the boardroom, than which footballer we sign to try to take control on the pitch.

[NICKZS]

Everyone is more interested in which corporation we sign to take control of the boardroom, than which footballer we sign to try to take control on the pitch.

Both are intrinsically linked, unfortunately. And therein I think lies the major difference in football over the last 20 years.