The World Cup is the pinnacle of the beautiful game, a congregation of leading ball artists, refined tactical magicians and helter-skelter fan armies, engaged in a month-long sacrosanct and delirious roller coaster of elite football, with the final and the right to hoist the iconic five kg cup aloft at the end as the culmination.
Fans’ recollection of footballing moments that delighted or, for worse, deeply disappointed are, almost inevitably, connected to the World Cup and not with Europe’s prime club competition, the Champions League, or with the European Championship.
In 1970, a year after the moon landing, the World Cup, and by extent football, sealed its television-genetic marriage with fans around the world as the exotic Brazilians, donning outlandish yellow shirts, darted and drifted around the Mexican pitches, encompassing a naive romanticism.
An American satellite beamed the final between Brazil and Italy to one billion households around the world. Many observers considered Brazil’s final game at the World Cup in Mexico that year as “the highest expression of football as art”.
Football as art
“Those last minutes,” Hugh McIlvanney wrote in his match report for the Sunday Times published on June 22, 1970, “contained a distillation of their soccer, its beauty and élan and almost undiluted joy. Other teams thrill us and make us respect them. The Brazilians at their finest gave us pleasure so natural and deep as to be a vivid physical experience… it was the apogee of football.”
Since then, the World Cup has never relinquished its status as football’s “Eutopia”, with an ever-growing popularity among television spectators and traveling fans. Franz Beckenbauer, Diego Maradona, Zico, Paolo Rossi and Zinedine Zidane have all joined the pantheon of football gods as a result of outstanding performances during the World Cup.
Yet, a school of thought adheres to the basic tenet that the European Championship, for all the glamour, glitz and history of the World Cup, simply produces better football than its global counterpart.
To define what constitutes “good”, let alone “better” in the comparative trap, is an arduous task. Good football, as an entertainment product, is associated with attacking, dynamic, one-dimensional and the many versions in between. Attacking in general derives from ball possession, risk-taking and pro-activeness.
Let’s look at the data
The European championship has 623 successful passes per game on average and the World Cup 634 when comparing the last five European Championships and the last five World Cups, according to Opta Sports, a leading sports data firm. In the Euros, 2.42 goals per game were scored, against 2.45 in the World Cup. The difference in shots per possession average was also marginal: 0.13 in the Euros, 0.14 in the World Cup.
Euro 2012 had 742 successful passes per game, more than the 2014 World Cup’s 666. Data offers insufficient evidence to distinguish between the two major tournaments. Besides, quantification foregoes the intensity and nuances of major international matches.
Thus, was Chile-Australia at the 2014 World Cup better than Albania-Switzerland at Euro 2016, a random comparison between two group games? In Brazil 2014, the group stages were of an enchanting quality, with positive football prevailing. The Netherlands' 5-1 demolition of Spain set the tone for a daredevil first round in which the participants considered defending an act of blasphemy, a breakaway from the overall post-1990 tendency of prudent game planning at the World Cup.
Euro 2016’s group phase has been a tepid and timid procession of low-scoring and cautious matches, not so many David v Goliath encounters, but limited outfits, playing underwhelming top tier nations within their resources. That trend is becoming more pronounced in the final round of group games, which have scarcely offered the quality and depth one should expect from a European Championship. Caution turned into mediocrity.
The low playing standard is the result of the European Championship’s expansion policy. For the first time, 24 teams are participating, up from 16 at Euro 2012, co-hosted by Poland and Ukraine. In Marseille, the two teams played out a drab 90 minutes, with elements of antiquated central European football.
Former UEFA president Michel Platini’s expansionist vision – a tool to cement his political power at the time – has another side effect: not only is the playing quality diluted, but teams aiming for a third spot, which offers an initial 66% chance of progress to the knock-out phase, could progress to the knockout stage by winning just a single game or drawing thrice. The incentive to play diminishes and, so, the game is not necessarily better when the Europeans play only one another.
