UEFA EURO 2016 - Final Tournament - II

[Hesher]

There were some great moments but overall it's been a disappointing tournament.

 

[Epictetus]

Was doing some trivia.

At the semi-final stage, Bayern Munich led the tournament with the most representatives. Which club team was second?

 

[Deficient Mode]

Was doing some trivia.

At the semi-final stage, Bayern Munich led the tournament with the most representatives. Which club team was second?

Crystal Palace

 

[Epictetus]

Crystal Palace

Damn. You beast.

I take it that wasn't a very difficult question.

 

[Deficient Mode]

Damn. You beast.

I take it that wasn't a very difficult question.

I had seen the question and answer before

 

[Panteras]

One of the worst football tournaments I can remember for lack of decent technical football, inventiveness and flair.

24 teams and the dumb extra amount of teams that advance to the knock out

 

[Nalens Oga]

Glad that's done, can we go back to 16 teams now, thanks for ruining my favourite tournament UEFA you *#@!@

Even 20 teams with four groups of 5 with 2 teams going through would be better than this.

 

[cgf]

To be honest I liked the expansion of participants. It was cool to see Hungary & Island at this tourney, and checking in on Romania ahead of what looks like it could be a second golden generation...if Hagi Jr., Tanase, Rotariu, Mavin, & co. develop well.

My primary complaints lie with the 3rd place advancers influence on play in the group stages...and might be in favor of a restructuring of the qualifying cycle; as germany didn't get out of first gear and still didn't have to ever worry about qualifying.

 

[Live in the Now]

The 20 teams didn't ruin the tournament. The top teams playing bad football multiple times did. The chemistry and team play in international football has never been worse.

Other than a couple South American teams and sometimes Germany, boring as absolute hell.

 

[cgf]

The 20 teams didn't ruin the tournament. The top teams playing bad football multiple times did. The chemistry and team play in international football has never been worse.

Other than a couple South American teams and sometimes Germany, boring as absolute hell.

Agree with this to. Which is why I would look at tweaking the qualifying format to see if we can't find a way for the top teams to need to be fully engaged in qualifying as well. Maybe mess with the pools and risk losing a top team to qualifying.

 

[Dr Pepper]

Yeah the brackets were all kind of ****ed up.

"Ok, so there's six groups, see, and we have it so that some group winners will play a 3rd seed, and the other group winners will play a 2nd seed. That's fair, right? What? How will we decide which winners play the 3rd seeds? Ummmmmm, flip a coin, I guess? Who cares, we'll deal with that part later."

 

[TheMoreYouKnow]

Football always goes in circles. The 70s were the era of 'total football', then the 80s into the mid 90s were mostly fairly uninspiring defensive fare then we saw a new era with more attacking football and the pendulum's swung back over the last couple of years.

 

[N o o d l e s]

Yeah the brackets were all kind of ****ed up.

"Ok, so there's six groups, see, and we have it so that some group winners will play a 3rd seed, and the other group winners will play a 2nd seed. That's fair, right? What? How will we decide which winners play the 3rd seeds? Ummmmmm, flip a coin, I guess? Who cares, we'll deal with that part later."

Spot on, they need to fix the brackets. Why some group winners got to play 3rd place teams and Italy had to play Spain was laughable

 

[The_Human_Atombomb]

Spot on, they need to fix the brackets. Why some group winners got to play 3rd place teams and Italy had to play Spain was laughable

You can't just fix the brackets as long as 24 teams partake in the tournament. And that's not going away.

 

[Dr Pepper]

You can't just fix the brackets as long as 24 teams partake in the tournament. And that's not going away.

Why not?

We just saw them do in the NHL, for whatever reason.

A more logical seeding/bracket system should be easy for them to figure out over the next four years, no?

 

[cgf]

The brackets were fine somebody was gunna have to play a third place team it's on some top teams for underachieving.

The problem was teams playing not to lose because three draws and an even goal differential could well see them through. That is my biggest complaint, teams were too incentivized to play anti-football.

 

[NHL Dude 120]

So which players are gonna be benift and get a big money transfer??

 

[Luigi Habs]

did they announce the player of the tournament?

 

[Dr Pepper]

In case anyone was wondering:

http://deadspin.com/5875933/how-the-song-seven-nation-army-conquered-the-sports-world

 

[Edo]

The Euro's should be 16 teams. This is coming from somebody whose national side have never made a Euro and benefits from the expansion. The tournament dragged on too long and there's too much potential for additional injuries with how often some of these guys play.

Real Madrid might potentially lose Ronaldo for a while because he had to play an extra game.

There just isn't any benefit to add the extra 8 teams save for the extra $$$$ Uefa gets.

 

[Suiteness]

There just isn't any benefit to add the extra 8 teams save for the extra $$$$ Uefa gets.

Which is why the 24 teams concept is here to stay.

As for the seedings, the only team who really got screwed by it was Italy. Wins their group, ends up with Spain in the round of 16, Germany in the quarters and would have had to beat the host France in the semis.

 

[Wee Baby Seamus]

Griezmann wins Player of the Tournament.

Team of the tournament:

Patricio
Kimmich
Boateng
Pepe
Guerreiro
Allen
Ramsey
Payet
Kroos
Griezmann
Ronaldo

 

[Hesher]

The brackets aren't to blame. Blame the teams that were supposed to win their groups but didn't (Spain, Portugal, England). That's what messed up the brackets.

I think expanding to 24 teams isn't necessarily bad but they need to find a system where only the top two teams would advance.

 

[TheMoreYouKnow]

I suppose it depends on what you consider the 'problem'. The fact Portugal had one of the easiest routes into the final ever having played Iceland, Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Poland and Wales to get there while Spain, Italy, Germany and France were cannibalizing each other? I think it's obviously a bit unfortunate and the seeding and bracketing can to some extent be blamed for it. However, it's also not unprecedented and not the reason the tournament kinda sucked.

I think we're just seeing an overall shift toward a more defensive approach to the game at the moment. I think one consequence of the principles of possession football championed by Guardiola and others becoming more widely used by talented, skilled teams in recent years is that it forces the less skilled teams in matches into a much more defensive default position in matches.

You don't slug it out vs such teams because you will lose. Managers have realized this. You form a layered curtain of defense, you alternate between sitting back with 8-9 players in your own box and periods of more aggressive midfield pressure. I honestly think people haven't talked enough about the revolutionary impact of shot blocking in football. It's as big a deal as it is in hockey. When I started watching football 30 years ago and up to maybe 7-8 years ago, blocked shots were quite rare and often seemed more coincidental. The idea often being that a blocked shot could be deflecting into goal as well.

Nowadays it's the ideal weapon vs possession teams and it's obviously something defenders' training is increasingly taking it into account as such. Blocks today aren't desperate last ditch measures, they're calculated tactics and used throughout matches. Possession teams are often stuck passing around the box without much effect because the opening they're looking for in the box is simply blocked by bodies. Meanwhile, the workaround of long-distance shooting is typically frustrated by shot blocking.

People laugh when a shot goes 10 yards wide, but they often forget that this is because the shooter cannot take any of the obvious shots because those won't get through on goal, so they try something fancier or simply run out of steam and just shoot to avoid a turnover. You kept seeing this with Germany, where players like Kroos, Ozil, Kimmich and Mueller kept moving the ball, looking for a shooting angle and simply not finding it as the defense consciously and in coordinated fashion moved their bodies into those shooting lanes.

In a worst case scenario, those blocked shots can initiate devastating counter-attacks as well. There's definitely a lot more method to it than there used to be. One can't really fault managers for building these kind of defensive bulwarks when the relentless attack by possession teams puts their somewhat less skilled teams on their heels to begin with. What makes this bad news for entertaining football is that this is no longer just happening when a top side like Bayern meet a much worse team like say Ingolstadt, but when a Germany meet an only barely less skilled France team who still fancy their chances a lot more playing on the counter attack while putting up a concrete wall around their box.

 

[Deficient Mode]

I think we're just seeing an overall shift toward a more defensive approach to the game at the moment. I think one consequence of the principles of possession football championed by Guardiola and others becoming more widely used by talented, skilled teams in recent years is that it forces the less skilled teams in matches into a much more defensive default position in matches.

You don't slug it out vs such teams because you will lose. Managers have realized this. You form a layered curtain of defense, you alternate between sitting back with 8-9 players in your own box and periods of more aggressive midfield pressure. I honestly think people haven't talked enough about the revolutionary impact of shot blocking in football. It's as big a deal as it is in hockey. When I started watching football 30 years ago and up to maybe 7-8 years ago, blocked shots were quite rare and often seemed more coincidental. The idea often being that a blocked shot could be deflecting into goal as well.

It doesn't force them to turtle. Those teams have the least chances of beating a team that has mastered recovering the ball immediately. Less talented teams can also try to play possession football and counter-press vs. the Bayerns of the world, and there's little evidence that it's any less successful than trying to Of course, at national level, the offenses are less organized, and the nature of the competition rewards conservative play more than domestic competition.

I do agree that defenses have improved recently, and advances in defensive tactics have become standardized far more quickly than advances in possession tactics. This is because the vast majority of football people have never questioned the idea that it's far easier to defend as a team than attack as a team, when it really isn't.