Don’t follow European club soccer/football. It’s a corrupt and bias sport where the rich dominate and the rest of the clubs are feeder clubs. Football is at a sad state of affairs, same teams near always win the league title and champions. If a team threatens or has young upcoming stars, the bigger clubs just buy them and extinguish the challenge. Spanish. German, French and Italy league is a forgone conclusion; it’s disgusting and I don’t know how football fans tolerate this. Maybe the game is that great that they endure this rubbish just to watch the beautiful sport.
It’s hard to gauge greatness in football in modern times when all the talent play for a few select clubs. Sure, Messi and Ronaldo dominate but both play in a team with the best players in the world and team set up JUST for them. I still rank what Maradona did at Napoli higher than anything Messi or Ronaldo have done, Maradonna WC career is greater than Messi and Ronaldo combined, just rewatch those games and the tackling and violence this man suffered.
But you have the English League, which is much more competitive, fairer rules, lenient refs and more “entertaining” but the quality is trash since all the elite of elite don’t play there. It’s a catch 22, fun to watch but you know the best aren’t just playing here.
The only good thing about modern football is actually international football. Because it’s tougher than ever to win a world cup and a lot of a former minnow teams are improving at a rapid rate and slowly challenging the former elites. Chile, USA, Algeria, Japan, Ghana, Belgium, Costa Rica and so on. If you follow closely, nations worldwide are literally investing billions into youth development, local leagues and improving their national team. 2018 could give us a new WC winner, Chile or Belgium.
I suggest you better off, watching and supporting a local MLS club and following USNMT, its more fun to see local clubs grow and debating how is the best American 11, unlike clubs, you cannot buy players and must do with your national talent of pool which makes for more interesting debates.
If football/soccer only had a salary and transfer club, than the sport would revert back actual tactics, managerial decisions, players courage heart in big moments, small gulf in talent and we would truly see who actually is the best player in the world is then, if all teams were equal and talent was evenly, I wouldn’t be surprised seeing players like Koke, Mane, Draxler, Reus, De Byrune, Progba, Carrasco, Dybala and so on to win it.
TBH for the past couple years there's lots of games I felt Belgium won only off of talent, as opposed to playing well, if that makes sense
Gignac
team Mexico
Elevate USA soccer as a whole.
