Yeah I gotta say I just saw this post and felt like contributing, so cards on the table I’m not a huge Gunners fan or anything and I don’t exactly follow the Premier League due to the abysmal coverage in my country.

That said, I did catch the Man U match. Man U has some decent quality here and there and so does Arsenal, yet I was very underwhelmed with both sides. But in general, looking at the state of European football by and large, I feel like I’m underwhelmed a lot.

Teams are more interested in playing for minimum results. It seems to be a trend that first halves are super boring, no risk anywhere, no real pressure off the ball… It feels like the main objective is not to concede any goals. This makes the second halves more interesting, but you might also get a lot of goalless draws.

To compare, I also watched El Clásico yesterday. Aside from the fact that having yet another cup in such a busy season and that this one is the least significant, and skating over the fact that the final was played in Jeddah for some reason: Madrid showed some of the worst football I’ve seen all season. Barça played with guts, with fun, with dare and it payed off because the players had both quality and determination. I saw a team playing a great game. Real seemed to be going through the motions of the game and the amount of hard fouls in the late game showed a total lack of control.

I also watch a lot of Italian football and especially the matches that are promoted as being interesting fixtures often are so disappointing. The most interesting thing that can happen is a bottom end team beating a team in the mid of the table, or one of the top teams just does not bring it at all and you get to see some counters.

I don’t know if it was always like this, but the state of football seems to be deteriorating across the board.