Seeing lots of debates on Twitter at the moment about how the sport has fallen off when players such as Saka as now called world class compared to what we used to define as that. (Bale, Robben etc). It got me thinking about why this is the case. Is it due to nostalgia goggles making us look at legend players more favourably? Has the bracket for being ‘World Class’ simply gone down so it does encompass more players? Or is there an actual decrease in the quality of footballers in the current game?
Interested in people’s thoughts here 😀
Athleticism-improved
Tactical awareness-improved
Individual skill - gone down.
Reason: Managers are scrutinised more than ever where the Roman Abrahimovich or Real Madrid model of firing managers are followed by even mid-level clubs. This leads to managers having to take conservative approach of avoiding a loss first than going for the win-meaning more players are discouraged from being individualistic and getting in line with the team tactics, hence lesser exciting players and lesser skilled players. Essentially the effect of corporate profit and too much statistical analysis. The same thing happens in the NBA with everyone being a 3-point merchant because that is the best thing to do to get points but brings the excitement down.