From the Football Superstar to the Superstar Squad

One of the most important matches in football was Italy vs Brazil in 1982. The 1970s were very often called the "me" decade but that was very far from the case when it came to football. The Dutch captured the imagination by playing "total football", where forwards were not necessarily always forwards, defenders were not always defenders, but players very often changed their role on the field in response to the changing situations. The Germans played for the team: it spoke volumes that the most famous German player of this era was Franz Beckenbauer, who was a defender / sweeper, rather than the more traditional glamourous centre forwards. 

In 1982, Brazil had a collection of players who caught the world's imagination, because they were reminiscent of the wonderful 1970 Brazil side. There was Zico, Socrates, Falcao, Eder. It was a hipster's paradise of a team. But perhaps their weakness was not being sufficiently organised in defence. As a result, football became more defensive, and definitely more team oriented in the 80s all the way to 2008. 

IF you were to look at the lineup for Euros 2000, there's a wealth of famous individuals. For France alone, there was Vieira, Petit, Zidane, Henry, Pires and Thuram. Beckham was a fine footballer, but he was the first to embrace the new role of the footballer as modern celebrity. He was probably the first influencer footballer, and even went on to marry Victoria Spice, although unlike most other influencers, he was actually good at something. 

Real Madrid had the infamous "Galacticos" policy, and they rounded up some of the most famous attacking talent in the world. They had Beckham, (fat) Ronaldo, Figo, Raul, Casillas in their team. That team, curiously enough, was infamous for being underachievers. They didn't win enough trophies, and year after year, they failed to win either La Liga or UCL. Their most infamous acts were to ship off Vincente Del Bosque and Claude Makalele because neither of them fitted their glamorous image. Barcelona weren't very different - they had Ronaldinho, Deco, Xavi and the upcoming Messi in their team. However, Guardiola took over, and suddenly everything changed. 

To be sure, managers had always been celebrities. Even before the premier league era, Bobby Moore, Bob Paisley, Kenny Dalglish and Brian Clough had been famous, and had received a lot of the credit for their teams' success on the field. And Serie A had no shortage of famous managers, in Lippi, Trappatoni, Capello, Sacchi, and maybe even Eriksson. But Alex Ferguson would be the superstar manager, the one who transformed Manchester United from a sleeping giant to a mega club. In the 00s, English football would be dominated by 4 clubs, and their managers - Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger, Jose Mourinho and Gerard Houllier / Rafael Benitez would be the superstar managers. 

Football became even more team oriented than ever before, with the data revolution and the talk about tactics and formation. Suddenly the discussion changed from the individual performances of the players to the tactics and the shape and how well these people fit into their formations. The notable managerial names were people who maybe weren't superstar managers, but who nevertheless managed to stamp their identities on their teams - people like Sam Allardyce, Roy Hodgson and David Moyes. 

Paradoxically, individuals in football lived in the shadow of 2 superstars - Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. And they were different kinds of superstars, they had little in common with each other other than they were both midfielder / forward hybrids. Ronaldo was an individualist. Messi played for his team, or rather his team played for him. Ronaldo was tall and athletic. Messi was a small but fast dribbler. Ronaldo was a jock. Messi was a nerd. Ronaldo was a borderline narcissist extrovert, Messi was a reserved introvert. 

But during the era of Ronaldo-Messi, other individuals struggled to shine. Paradoxically, you could say that the Spain team which dominated in the years 2008-2013 had plenty of big names, and many of them were in the same Barcelona side as Messi: there was Ramos, Puyol, Xabi Alonso, Xavi, Silva, Casillas and Iniesta. But one struggled to name the Real Madrid side which won 4 champions leagues in the 2010s. Maybe that's because the side didn't really have a lot of stars, but rather they had very good team players who formed the spine of the team. People like Toni Kroos, Pepe and Rafael Varane. Even Sergio Ramos had to be considered a team player. Gareth Bale is a case in point: he had enough talent to be a galactico but was too erratic to be a real star. 

The 2010s instead became the era of superstar teams. The manager and the teams were the star, instead of the players. The breakaway European Super League were basically the clubs which considered themselves superstar clubs. (Although I'm not sure why AC Milan, Arsenal and Tottenham belong to that group). Man U was struggling in this era, in the departure of Alex Ferguson. For some reason, they signed up a motley crew of fading superstars who hardly belonged together: Angel Di Maria, Falcao, Paul Pogba, Edinson Cavani. 

The Liverpool side which won the UCL and the EPL was the closest thing we had to a great team with great players, but many of them were players who became great only after Klopp found that they were a part of the jigsaw puzzle that fit. And even in the most iconic match, Liverpool were missing Mohamad Salah and Roberto Firmino and only had Sadio Mane out of the famous front three. The famous corner routine involved Shaqiri, Trent Alexander Arnold and Divock Origi, two of whom were not first team players!

Most interestingly was what happened to Man City during this era. Around the time of 2008, the premier league seemed to be some kind of quasi-equilibrium. The big 4 were the big 4, and coincidently, that was also the number of UCL places alloted to English clubs. So Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United and Manchester City took those places for a few years in a row. Part of the reason is that people saw what happened to Leeds United, and they were a club who could end up in big trouble when they failed to qualify for the UCL. So during those years, there were virtually no pretenders to the UCL club, and nobody who flitted in and out of the UCL places. 

Then something really interesting happened and an Abu Dhabi consortium bought over Man City and started pumping a lot of money into it. Suddenly, the UCL places became competitive again. Everton, Tottenham and Aston Villa started getting fancy ideas about joining that club (although Everton and Aston Villa quickly gave up). Tottenham and Leicester got lucky because there were seasons when the usual suspects had gaps between generations, and fallow seasons where they weren't competitive: the old guard had just started retiring and the new guard had yet to grow into a great team. 

Roberto Mancini had built the first great Man City team. They had stalwarts like Sergio Aguero, David Silva, Joe Hart, Vincent Kompany, Pablo Zabaleta and Yaya Toure. This was the spine of the team which won them league titles in 2012 and 2014. However, a few players who were coming into the team after that didn't really measure up, and Man City were in danger of becoming a team who could always get into the champions league, but not win the title.

So here's where Pep Guardiola comes in. It's not so much that his side had a regular spine, as there were people who flitted in and out of the side. It was a squad full of squad players. Even Sergio Aguero and David Silva had to be squad players. Joe Hart and Yaya Toure didn't fit his playing style, and had to go. His team would be a combination of Fernandinho, De Bruyne, Ederson, Laporte, Dias, Sterling, Gundogan, Stones, Mahrez, Gabriel Jesus. Other players like Otamendi, Sane, Silva, Mendy might be found wanting and get shipped out eventually. Guardiola could even piss off players who felt that they excelled, like Sergio Aguero and Raheem Sterling. But you could not argue with the results, in the league anyway. They won the league, getting insane points totals upwards of 95. And in the 20-21 title winning season, they could basically allow their rivals a headstart, and stay in the bottom half of the table at the start of December, before obliterating all the rivals by winning 21 out of 25 of the rest of the games. 

A player who played for both Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola, Thiago Alcantara went on the record, complaining that football currently was in a phase where "we see less magic, less fantasy, players do more, but faster". And this from a guy who was deemed essential by both Klopp and Guardiola for his unmatched understanding of the football systems he was supposed to work with!

Another way to look at this was to see Paris Saint Germain. They are top heavy, having spent heavily on Kylian Mbappe and Neymar. And they also have Angel Di Maria, but I don't know if they have a good plan for the rest of the team. In a way, they have dominated the French league for several years, although the fact that they allowed Monaco and Lille to pip them to the league title twice suggests some kind of underachievement, considering they have much more financial muscle than any of their domestic rivals. Furthermore, there is the record in the UCL - they've only managed to make the semi-finals twice in the last 2 seasons, and they've never managed to go out and win it, having fallen short to Bayern Munich and Manchester City. 

And then there's the spectacle of the Euros 2020. A lot of the favourite teams are out, and in a way this was not the edition where there was a clear favourite for the champion, even though quite a few people would have guessed France had the most stars. As of this writing, Germany, Belgium, France, Portugal, Netherlands, Croatia and Wales are out, and this is mainly because the uneven seeding has seen a lot of big sides being pitted against each other relatively early. The real upsets were when Switzerland beat France and Czech Republic beat the Netherlands. 

If there was something in common for the semi-finalists of World Cup 2018, it was that Belgium, England and France were immigrant countries - in any case, their squads had a higher proportion of immigrants than their general populations. Now, in Euros 2020 (which is, naturally, held in 2021), these are teams with excellent squad players. (Except for Denmark, but they're also a squad team). Anything can happen, but I'm predicting an England - Italy final. 

The England team has been remarked on for the wealth of attacking talent on display. Here are the attackers: Harry Kane, Raheem Sterling, Marcus Rashford, Dominic Calvert Lewin, Bukayo Saka, Jude Bellingham, Jadon Sancho, Phil Foden and Jack Grealish. 

And somehow, the star of the team has been the defence, with Pickford, Walker, Stones, Maguire, Trippier, Shaw, Declan Rice, Tyrone Mings and Kalvin Phillips impressing. It ought to be noted that many of these players are coached by Bielsa, Guardiola or Pochettino, and they probably are very used to following systems. In fact, it almost seems as though England are the new Germany. It almost seems that the England squad now is an inversion of the Sven Goran Eriksson side, which was filled with players who were stars of their respective club sides, but failed to gel together as a squad. This England generation - and this time, they had the advise of Lampard, Gerrard and Ferdinand, who told them not to repeat their mistake - would be keen to avoid the same. 

England has yet to meet genuine world class opposition, except maybe Germany and Croatia, whose claims to greatness can be disputed. I think their strongest opponent will be Spain or Italy in the final. But they've kept clean sheets all the way. Against Croatia, the Czechs, Scotland, Germany and Ukraine. Considering that they were playing against Patrick Schick, that is kinda impressive. 

Now, I think nobody really wants to tempt fate. I think that people are holding their collective breaths because it would be very hard to just predict that England might break a 55 year old hoodoo and win their first major tournament in forever. But I'm not officially affiliated with England so I can just say whatever I want. 

Football Miracle Results

 I think one of the most wonderful things about football was the magic of seeing something incredible happen in front of you. There would be something interesting about seeing something that hasn't happened for X number of years happen. Maybe that would be the romance of football.

The downside of football is that when you've been a fan for long enough, you'd grow to realise that statistically, football “miracles” happen all the time. Perhaps, if football were more egalitarian, “miracles” would happen on a more regular basis. Think about major sports in America – NFL, MLS, NBA and baseball, where more than half of the teams involve have been former champions of some sort.

Anyway, in football, there have been a lot of wonderful things. The one that all football fans of a certain age remember is the Malaysia Cup. And it's pretty unfair for Singapore to be out of that Malaysia Cup, given that in its history, in the pre-war days, Singapore has been one of the main teams in that competition. It's pretty remarkable that during the golden era of the Malaysia Cup, Singapore would be one of the strongest teams, year in year out, and still winning it would be a rarity, partially due to biased refereeing. But when Singapore won it for the final time, in 1994, it would be some kind of miracle, given how close Singapore was in 1990 and 1993.

There would be the miracle of Denmark winning the Euros in 1992. And it would be really interesting that the Euros had a history of small countries winning it – the USSR, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Greece, Portugal.

There were a lot of small clubs winning European Cups in the 1980s, but possibly that was the reason why the Champions League was set up – it was making the larger and more powerful rich clubs angry. From 1967 to 1993, you had Celtic, Feyenoord, Ajax Amsterdam, Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa, Hamburg, Porto, Steaua Bucharest, PSV Eindhoven, Marseilles and Red Star Belgrade winning the thing. After the Champion's League, it would be easier to stop unwanted surprises, but it would still be a cup format. There would be surprise packages like Porto FC, Inter Milan and Borussia Dortmund winning it. And there would still be surprise finalists like Atletico Madrid, Valencia, Monaco and Tottenham Hotspur reaching the final. And there would also be a debate over whether Paris Saint Germain would be a surprise package.

There would be surprise league winners. Because of how successful Manchester United has been, people often forget that breaking their duck in 1993 was a really big thing. Because Blackburn Rovers had always been a strong team since I started following English football, I didn't really appreciate that their league win in 1995 was such a shock. Of course, Man U and Blackburn were smaller clubs who became bigger clubs. Man U turned from a sleeping giant back into a giant, thanks to the genius of Alex Ferguson. Blackburn Rovers was bankrolled by a local tycoon, and noveau riche clubs often end up breaking a long drought. When Newcastle stormed to a seemingly unassailable lead at the end of 1995, I assumed that they were going to follow the way of Blackburn and become a great club for a few years, but that didn't happen.

Somehow, though, it was fun watching clubs like Leeds, Portsmouth and Middlesborough flirt with being great clubs (or at least clubs that entered Europe regularly). Well, didn't happen.

Unfortunately, the next big club to emerge would be Arsenal, and they would form a dynasty – at least for 7 years. And there would be the big Man U-Arsenal rivalry. Then it became the big 4 of the 00s, with Liverpool and Chelsea joining. Then the big 4 became the big 6, when Man City and Tottenham came in.

The great Ajax team in the mid 1990s was a singular thing, because it had an unusual collection of future stars, perhaps only rivalled by Man U at that time. I thought it was a foregone conclusion that Ajax Amsterdam (and by extension, the Dutch) would produce so many great stars, but that would be the last gasp of a great talent factory.

And the 90s were also the heyday of Serie A, which was a bit like what the Premier League was like in the 2010s – dynasties had yet to be formed. Sampdoria, Verona and Napoli won shock titles. I thought that Parma and Fiorentina being a great club was normal (it wasn't). And I thought that Roma and Lazio winning Serie A was normal (again, no).

And the Spanish League would also have a short spell of weirdness, with Deportivo La Coruna and Valencia winning leagues, and even Valencia reaching UCL finals. But most of the time, we'd have to settle for the duopoly of Real Madrid and Barcelona, with Atletico Madrid occasionally pipping a few underdog stories.

Sometimes, there can be truly earth shattering shocks, like Leicester City taking advantage of Chelsea, Man City, Arsenal and Tottenham simultaneously going to sleep, to nip in and take the title. But that was the season when Arsenal also found out that their league title drought was going to continue, when they would have the best chance for years to win and fell short. Likewise, Tottenham would overachieve and come as close to the EPL as they've ever been.

There are other shocks that feel like a long drought is over, but they actually herald the rise of a dynasty. France winning the World Cup in 1998 felt a bit like an upset, considering how seemingly dominant Brazil was in the late 1990s. But they would follow it up with a Euros win in 2000 and a World Cup runner up in 2006, and only a shock from Greece denying them in 2004. Spain winning the Euros in 2008 also felt like a wonderful underdog story, since it was the end of a 44 year drought, but then they followed up with a World Cup and another Euro. Similarly, Liverpool ending the drought in 2020 wasn't a big fluke, like a Leicester or maybe even a Tottenham win, but a purple patch which also included a Champion's League and a Champion's League runner up.

But there were teams that were nearly men. There were golden generations which never resulted in any titles. There was Holland, who seemed to reach the semi-finals with some regularity (1992, 2000, 2004, 1998, 2014), but never seemed to be better than that. There was the Czechs, who had some peak in 2004, and the Portuguese, also in 2004, but they had to wait until 2016, when they were truly the dark horses. Of course, Argentina deserves a mention, because if they don't win a major title, Lionel Messi does not win a major title. He had the nightmare of finishing second in the World Cup, then second – twice – in the Copa America. Well, he has a chance this year at the Copa America, so we'll see.

And maybe we might think of the present England and Belgium teams, who have reached the World Cup 2018 semi-finals, as could've been nearly men. Or they might win a prize and become immortals. We're also asking ourselves whether PSG and Man City could become champions of Europe, or maybe Guardiola could screw this up every single year by having a big brainfart ahead of a super important game, the way he was doomed to never ever win the UCL with Bayern Munich.

Then there are teams like Italy in the World Cup or Chelsea in the UCL. You might scratch your head at Italy being one of the all time great countries of the World Cup, with 4 wins, only bettered by the Brazillians. But they are the perennial pretty good team, who always come up with a good show. Sometimes they will be beaten finallists (1994 and 2000), and sometimes they will win by default (1982 and 2006). Similarly, Chelsea in the UCL (and also Bayern Munich too) get to the semi-finals so often (every 2-3 years) that they are bound to win by default every now and then, although sometimes I wonder how on earth Man City screwed it up in 2021.

And on top of miracle title wins, there have also been miracle results of matches. Like Man U completing their 1999 treble with 2 late goals, Liverpool's Miracle of Istanbul, or Chelsea snatching a win against Bayern Munich for their first UCL win.

Anyway, I seem to have written a lot of crap. I only really wanted to say: football “miracles” seem to be more common than you'd expect. I've seen a few things that seem unbelievable, and yet after scanning the football pages for decades, It's come to the point where nothing's truly surprising anymore. Nobody was even thinking about Leicester winning their league title, and it was their second miracle EPL season in a row (the previous season was about a miracle escape from relegation). But it was a running joke that Liverpool hadn't won a title for such a long time, and yet it has done so in 2020, after being cruelly denied in 2019.

As I'm writing this, the quarterfinals of Euro 2020 (and Copa America 2021) are about to begin. Who knows what will happen? Maybe Leo Messi could win his first international football title. Or England or Belgium could win their first Euros title.