Euro 2016 - How UEFA ruined the group stages of the Euros

Well, that was a struggle. It picked up in the last couple of days, but for the most part the new expanded group stage of the European Championship brought merely tedium. Of 36 games, there were perhaps only three that were of any great quality – and one of those, Poland’s 0-0 draw with Germany, seemed to bore a lot of people. That left only Italy’s 2-0 win over Belgium as well-organised expediency overcame disjointed individualism and Croatia’s unexpected 2-1 win over Spain.

Goals aren’t necessarily a measure of quality but they can at least offer drama and excitement when standards fall. Here there wasn’t even that, aside from Hungary and Portugal’s attempt to enliven the tournament in their 3-3 draw. The group stage yielded just 1.92 goals per game. For comparison, the last Euros yielded just 2.45 goals per game, Euro 2006 2.48 and Euro 2004 2.48. There were 2.70 goals per game in the Premier League just finished; only once in the past 15 years has it dipped below 2.5. There were 2.76 goals per game in this season’s Champions League.

This is the nature of the international game. There are times when tournaments seem to take on a life of their own, as happened at the last World Cup when for a game or two everybody seemed wildly attacking. In the end, though, even it settled down to a relatively modest 2.67 goals per game. But here, with only eight teams being eliminated, there was little sense of jeopardy in the first two rounds of games and all the fun of the final Group E and F fixtures couldn’t alter that.

But that’s a side issue to the lack of quality and the lack of entertainment. Part of the problem is that defences rule. The default for the vast majority of teams in international football is to sit deep and look to play in the most reactive way possible. The lack of time available to national coaches makes that all but inevitable.

There’s simply no way of imposing the complex pressing structures and pre-learned attacking gambits that characterise the top level of the club game. And given that no manager wants to risk a career-defining embarrassment, the result is cautious football and a reliance on individuals to unlock massed rearguards.

One of the problems is that those individuals seems in short supply. There are those, Arsene Wenger among them, who suggest modern European academies turn out technically gifted players without the streetwiseness to be top-level strikers and whether that is the reason or not, it’s certainly the case that there are a dearth of high-level strikers at this tournament, one of whom, Robert Lewandowksi, has been oddly out of sorts.

The tactical issue is exacerbated by the nature of the international game. The best games come when two sides of roughly equal ability take each other on. Unequal contests are rarely entertaining. That’s one of the reasons the FA Cup is fading as the rich grow ever richer and better. For all the romance and fun of a giant-killing, the vast majority of games between the elite and minnows produce grim tedious football, a slog of attack against defence. This is the unspoken truth of every third-round day: for every headline-making David slaying Goliath, there are a dozen contests in which a bored Goliath doggedly batters his way through David’s defences.

At least with the FA Cup it’s a break from the main action. International football, though, is predominantly made up of battles between the strong and the weak, something enshrined by the seeding system. England, for instance, haven’t played a competitive game against a side that have attacked them since September 2014, when Switzerland came out in the second half of their qualifier in Basel and were picked off 2-0. Not coincidentally, that was probably the best England have played in the past two years. Other major nations have precisely the same issue.

That is problematic on a number of levels, not least of which is the fact that a lot of teams end up only playing half the game. A top side basically attacks and rarely do any defending; smaller sides largely practise keeping the score down. England, with their pace in forward areas, should be effective on the break. That’s the hope Roy Hodgson is clinging to in this tournament. He may be right. But the fact is we don’t know because it’s never been practised in competitive conditions. The assumption, equally, is that England’s defence is rickety and liable to buckle against top sides, but again, it’s never really been tested in a proper game when the midfield is offering proper cover.

Of course breaking down packed defences is part of the challenge for a top side at any level. The smaller team has the right to defend, perhaps even the obligation. It’s not their fault. It’s the fault of competition structures. In qualifying in’s inevitable – and there is something to be said for maintaining the rarity of games between the very best: England v Germany should be a contest to be savoured, not a yearly routine. But the finals ought to be the best against the best. There ought to be a concentration of quality. The bloating of World Cup and Euros has destroyed that.

Those who point out that Wales, Northern Ireland, Hungary and Iceland have produced some of the best moments of the tournament are right, but Romania, Ukraine, Russia and Sweden were dreadful. And that really is the issue. The expansion of the Euros was undertaken for political and financial reasons, not with any thought to the quality of football. Minnows who are good enough can still qualify, as Scotland, Slovenia and Latvia have proved in the past.

But having half the tournament made up by teams with next to no hope of winning it has created a sludge of uninspiring football. There are those who argue minnows deserve their place in the sun but that’s bogus sentimentality: they deserve the right to compete for their place in the sun. This is a major tournament, not an all-inclusive school sports day. They’re strangling the point of the tournament, which is football.

Then there’s the fact that 24 teams is simply an unwieldy number for a tournament. At 1-1 in their second game, Switzerland and Romania backed off, both reasoning a draw gave them a good chance of progress. Switzerland were right but Romania lost to Albania. Against England, Slovakia played for a 0-0 draw to finish third in the group. By the end, Northern Ireland were playing for a 1-0 defeat against Germany.

Only in the final group games, as teams fought to stay in the tournament, did there come anything resembling real football. Perhaps the solution is to improve the format and extend the tournament to 32 teams, but that risks an even greater dilution of quality. Far better would be the unthinkable step of going back to 16, a structure that was both compact and encouraged good football.