This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on July 22, 2024 - July 28, 2024
Spain celebrated; England wept. But contrasting emotions at the end of the European Championships were not confined to one nation’s swift reclamation of the podium and the other’s perennial pain. The tournament’s joyous return to party mood after the pandemic was a welcome distraction from political turmoil, but football itself is in danger of becoming more of an entertainment than a sport.
With the clawing hand of commerce omnipresent, national teams bore the weight of the club calendar with tired legs and lacklustre play. Even national colours were a rarity with even the slightest clash deemed sufficient to change and promote second-choice strips.
Meanwhile, coaches, eyeing lucrative post-tournament contracts from major clubs, could not afford to mess up their auditions, so they played it safe. This brought tension and drama towards the end, but to get there, much of the football was turgid.
Even so, viewing figures were up, while goals were down — on the eve of the final, there was a significant drop to 2.28 per game from 2.78 at the previous edition. At best, Euro 2024 will be remembered as a tournament of great moments rather than a great tournament.
This may dovetail with the shorter attention spans of the age and a preference for byte-sized coverage, but it makes for less of a spectacle. And as football becomes easier to access via online clips and highlights, it is losing its true identity. The danger was spotted by the Argentinian sage, Marcello Bielsa, ironically during the Copa America, which was running concurrently.
The 65-year-old, whose Uruguay side were lauded as the most attractive of a fractious event, noted: “Football is not just the five minutes of highlights. It is much more than that, it is a cultural expression, it is a way of identification.”
He went on to warn of the dangers of commercialism: “If you don’t ensure that what people watch is something pleasant, it will only benefit the business. Because the business only cares about how many people watch it. Football has more and more spectators but is becoming less and less attractive. What made this game the best game in the world at the time, is not prioritised today.”
His words struck a chord as, despite there being more fans and a better atmosphere, the fare of the past month lacked the excitement and quality of the 2022 Fifa World Cup. With hindsight, almost everyone now puts that down to the Qatar event being played mid-season when the players were at peak readiness.
In Germany, many of the stars had still to recover from the rigours of season climaxes for their clubs, going straight into warm-up games for their countries. Indeed, the presence of nine Basque-based players, who carry lighter fixture loads than the usual Madrid-Barcelona preponderance, may have been a factor in Spain’s relative freshness.
The two biggest culprits for dull football among coaches were England’s Gareth Southgate, who has since resigned, and France’s Didier Deschamps, once dubbed “a water carrier” by Eric Cantona. The two countries stank out the tournament while Spain danced the flamenco around both.
Deschamps, who was bidding to be the first to win both World Cup and Euros as a player and manager, was unmoved by the criticism, saying: “If people don’t want to watch, they can change channels.”
For his part, Southgate seemed to forget that he was allowed five substitutes and one more in extra time, so late were his changes. Players who were clearly spent and carrying injuries remained on the field — much to the frustration of all concerned. By refusing to rest players when offered the chance, he undermined the argument against the constant enlargement of tournaments.
The Euros has always played second fiddle to the World Cup but only when it had just 16 teams. Then it could claim to have the superior football as well as an intensity that a 32-team competition cannot match. The inclusion of the likes of Georgia, Slovenia and Slovakia added much to this occasion, but did so at the cost of its once-unique selling point.
Eager to maximise profit, neither Uefa, which runs this competition, nor Fifa, which has enlarged the World Cup to 48 teams, has ever believed that less can be more. In mitigation, enlargement does give smaller countries an opportunity they wouldn’t otherwise get.
The 2024 Euros was forecast to generate €2.44 billion (RM12 billion), which is well on the way to doubling the €1.39 billion that the last edition with 16 teams (in 2012) produced. It was a jump from 31 to 51 games and no maths genius is required to see the reason. But it’s still less than half the gargantuan 104 games of the next World Cup.
Uefa’s other great cash cow is the Champions League, which it is expanding from 125 matches to 189 for the coming season, but that is spread over nine months. But many of the stars from the Euros will be featuring and this is on top of their domestic campaigns starting next month. As Bielsa alluded, football was once a simple game.
In spite of the commercial shadow, a major positive of the tournament was that the right team won. There was almost unanimity that Spain was the best before the final was played and there were certainly no dissenting voices afterwards. It also revealed a new face of the nation with a multiracial mix of players where previous Spanish trophy winners had been all white.
They won all their seven games, which means in terms of prize money, they pick up the maximum of €28.25 million. Runners-up England get slightly less and all 24 countries will take home substantial sums between that and the minimum of €9.15 million on a performance basis. But the real money will come later from sponsorship deals and myriad commercial opportunities.
In Spain, they are more used to these heady heights having ruled the game with a World Cup triumph (2010) sandwiched between two Euro wins in 2008 and 2012. That’s not to say the players won’t become celebrities. One is already: Lamine Yamal turned 17 the day before the final, still wears braces on his teeth but scored the goal of the tournament. His contract with Barcelona includes a buyout clause of US$1 billion (RM4.6 billion).
In contrast, England’s players were looking at immortality and commensurate rewards had they ended a major tournament drought that goes back to 1966. A pot of gold for ending the purgatory would have awaited them, and even though they lost, lots of cash is still likely to roll their way.
“Nothing stops the nation like football,” said sports marketing strategist Rich Johnson, as actors, musicians and politicians all gave way to the action in Germany before resuming their business. The Wimbledon tennis championship and Glastonbury music festival were among events that paused. Winning would have been the Holy Grail.
If the players have missed out on the immortality achieved by the 1966 World Cup winning side, they are already much wealthier than those players ever were. But former striker Chris Sutton summed it up by telling the BBC: “It’s a good thing for football that Spain won the tournament with the brand they played.”
As for Southgate, he called for a new chapter under someone else. For England’s and football’s sake, we can only hope it will be more attractive.
Bob Holmes is a long-time sportswriter specialising in football
Save by subscribing to us for your print and/or digital copy.
P/S: The Edge is also available on Apple's App Store and Android's Google Play.