In Defense of Modern Football

Approach any fan outside a football stadium, and ask about their favorite football moment of all time, the answer you get is probably from when the interviewee was between the ages of 6 and 14.

Those golden years when the only thing we worried about was the results at the weekend and the fear of that cold dark wake-up before school on a Monday morning, when those five days before the next round of fixtures felt like an eternity, and those occasional midweek kick-offs provided a brief reprieve from the brutal cycle of school, extracurricular activities, and homework.

When the players on the pitch were superheroes, and not just men the same age as us or younger who are living out our childhood dreams while we slave away at our cubicles, earning their weekly wages in a year.

So maybe it’s no surprise that the internet is riddled with football fans bemoaning the modern game, longing for the golden days of yore, when tackles went flying in, and everything was less corporate.

A quick search on Google or X will garner hundreds of posts and articles expressing discontent, asking just why modern football is so boring.

Maybe there’s some truth to it, after all, Manchester City has won the league four years in a row, that’s not exactly exciting is it? But a quick search of the archives will remind us that in the first decade of the Premier League, between 1992 and 2002, Manchester United won the league seven times, not exactly ultra-competitive.

At the other end of the table, we hear complaints that newly promoted sides can’t compete to stay in the league, especially after last season when the three newcomers, Luton, Sheffield United, and Burnley, all crashed back into the second division.

However, it’s always been difficult for these sides to stay up, historically newly promoted sides have a 56% chance to stay in the Premier League for more than a season, so the idea of losing all three while unlikely is far from statistically impossible.

It was only the season before, in 2022/23, when all three of Bournemouth, Fulham, and Nottingham Forest stayed up. Those three teams are flying two seasons later, all three in the top half of the table, and Nottingham Forest sitting in a Champions League place.

There’s never been a blueprint for how to stay up in the Premier League, and we’re no closer to finding one now than we’ve ever been.

If it’s the physicality that’s changed then there’s some truth to that, as with every facet of life things are a bit safer than they used to be, for better or worse.

But that doesn’t mean we’ve lost it all, only last weekend in the pivotal match between Arsenal and Liverpool we saw Virgil Van Dijk and Kai Havertz clash off the ball, the former lashing out at Havertz and sending him to the ground.

Neither of them received a booking, and another search on X will show outcry that Van Dijk wasn’t sent off from fans who in the same breath will say the game’s gone soft.

The simple fact is we can’t recreate the feelings of our childhood, there’s no surprise that people enjoy Christmas less as adults than they did when they were children, so why should football be so different?

Take a look at the goals of the month from September of this year, cracker after cracker, goals that could rival any in pure power, finesse, class, and any other footballing buzzwords that pundits love to throw around.

Twenty years from now, the children watching today's games will be posting on whatever form of social media is en vogue in the 40s, reminiscing about Cole Palmer, or Jhon Duran’s wonder goals from 2024, and reminding the next generation of fans how they just don’t make players quite like they used to.

It should serve as a bittersweet reminder that football hasn’t gotten worse, we’ve all just gotten a bit older.