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FireBednarsSuccessor
It's true for today's football, regardless of origin. Just look at the last CL. It was awful quality. The two finalists played either awful football or just play all-out defensive football.
When you see a guy like Ben Arfa blamed by DD for losing balls when he tries to dribble...
What coaches want nowadays is either a Messi/Ronaldo/Ibra (someone who scores 50 goals a year) or forwards that track back like crazy.
While it's IMO a big bonus to have someone who can also make defensive play (see Cavani for instance), forwards are here to creat danger and offense. This should come as first priority.
You can't use the 3rd place **** as an excuse. It's elimination time and teams are still playing 10 men defense.
This was also an unfortunate year for the CL. Barca and Bayern both ran into the premier anti-football team and barely went out, despite playing beautiful football. While Dortmund where just getting started under Tuchel and BMG making their CL debut under this generation. There's a lot of anti football around, and a lot of more physical pressing football; but that's always been true. The teams who try to play beautiful football have always been rarer. DD being an idiot isn't an different from what previous generations had to deal with.
This has been an ugly year for football, but it's just one year; not a longer arching trend IMO.
As far as the 3rd place thing, of course that's a factor. If a team focuses on a negative strategy in the lead up to the tourney and the group stage, it's tough to expect them to suddenly change that up in the elimination rounds once they've been rewarded for playing so negatively.