Modern football is ‘bloodless and sanitised facsimile of a facsimile’

Is modern football basically sh*te? There’s certainly a case to be made. We have no real interest in the actual Champions League.

Send your views to theeditor@football365.com

Sit down, James
To anyone having pops at the (roughly) over 35s, 40s and beyond – especially for anyone too young to have seen football from 1985 – 2010, and thinks that when we moan and despair over what the sport has become, that we’re just being clichéd middle-aged blokes pining after our youth – you’re probably correct… To about 20% maximum. For the other 80%, you could not be more wrong, and I’m truly sad for you that you won’t ever get to enjoy what we were lucky enough to live through.

We had a player’s game, and a true Golden Age. We all know the unbelievable list of players you could go through. Creativity, spontaneity, variety, personality, self-expression, true passion and genuine warrior spirit and collectivism – for the glory, not just the cash. Sure there were tactics and great managers – but it wasn’t all about metrics, control, perfect gameplans, ipads on the bench. A staff of 30 sports scientists, data analysts and fucking set-piece coaches. Give me strength.

An industry of self-justifying, unnecessary guff-merchants, over-complicating and over-analysing the Beautiful Game into some plasticky-parade of robotic, identikit, marginal-gains granularity of utter tedium and joylessness. All on shamefully huge salaries and the whole thing corrupted into some Formula 1 Meat Edition, driven by mega-money and all its attendant pressures and incentives. It’s a load of absolute sh*te, lads!

The manager/head coach moving pawns around the pitch to institute their latest 2-year “project”. Do you really, hand on heart, think there will be a steady stream of modern-day players who in 20, 30 years (if we’re even still here) will be spoken about like those recent greats were? Really? Seriously?

This thing now? It’s Roboball, AI-ball. Nothingball. A bloodless and sanitised facsimile of a facsimile. Sure there’s some tiny bit of good left, but it really is sparce and the money and corporate vibe of it all has long ago made elite football eat itself.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion of course – but to me and to nearly everyone I know, as much as we cling on like fiends to one of the only constants that still – superficially at least – gives some structure and escapism to our lives in our mad world – this modern game is absolute Shit On A Stick…and it’s getting ever Shittier.

We had Kaká, but sadly – you’ve just had kaka.
Kentona (We sure had the best innings though, which I’m eternally grateful for!) Manchester

Which players could not cut it in 2026?
Matthew Le Tissier.

*drops mic*
Richard (was there ever a player more “of his time”?) Pike

Ranking Richard Hughes sales
Just because quite a few places have done listicles on Richard Hughes’s signings as Liverpool’s director of football, but I haven’t as yet seen an article about the decisions on letting people go, I thought I’d try a ranked departure list. (Excluding Trent as he was learning Spanish for at least a year before Hughes arrived, so what could he possibly do with that level of player [dishonesty / playing the game] )

1) ‎Darwin Nunez – 50-60% of the money back. This as a good deal, done in a timely way.

2) Curtis Jones. tackle and dual success rates barely at 50% but he’ll definitely show his PASHUN’ after the final whistle, or to the cameras. Getting 20 odd million for a player with no market interest in a summer where everyone was looking for central midfielders, was good business.

=3) Carvalho, Sepp van den Berg and Doak. 27 million and 20 million from Brentford, and 20 million from Bournemouth was the last flare of ‘good selling’ that had paid for all LFC had achieved under the old regime. It wouldn’t be repeated.

=6) no contract offers for Matip or Thiago; They couldn’t move. Entirely made sense.

=8) Bajcetic and Nat Phillips. Not to be. At least they’ll have youtube of some very good Liverpool highlights.

10) Konate. With the death of Jota last summer, and then his father mid season, I’m not sure when there could have been a good time to renegotiate Konate’s deal. The cards were against Hughes preventing his ultimate departure on a free, and offering VVD money would have been madness.

=11) getting 10 million each for Bobby Clark and Tyler Morton was solid, if tinged by a degree of ‘how much could they have actually added value though’ doubts given the complete lack of cover in the middle. Especially with the latter being a fan fave in France. My judgement is likely influenced by United winning silverwear with Greening and Chadwick and Kieron Richardson and all manner of development squad fluff filling gaps here and there.

And now it goes to pot.

=13) Getting nothing for Tsimikas or Harvey Elliot in two windows. Seriously, nothing? That doesn’t paint Hughes as an affective salesman.

=15) The new contracts for VVD and for Salah. This is somewhat unfair as who is going to be brave enough to let the captain and best player go, for free, after they’ve both just been excellent in a title winning season, but it’s that sort of thing that a DoF get’s paid to make a big call on, and he shirked it… and took all summer shirking it. The wages offered complicated every other negotiation that summer, and the underlying numbers for Salah were there to suggest parting after the title might have suited everyone.

17) I still can’t get my head around no contract offer for Robinson.

18) Kellegher is likely better than both an aging Allison and the evidence of Mamardashvili to-date.

19) Luis Diaz. His entourage was pushing for a new deal. He was years away from negotiations starting. It all got messy. But he had just powered LFC to the title playing as striker or on the left. Rather than give-in and negotiate early, the money instead went to Salah. The complete absence of Diaz’s pace, and anyone to carry the ball, or be able to press, cost Slot his job the following season. Beyond that, 65 million looked ‘normal’ last season but LFC didn’t replace him last season; by the time they did look to sign a winger, 65 million get’s you barely anything at all. Brown-esque selling the gold at entirely the wrong time.

20) ‎Quansah. Some things get lost over time, but Klopp benched Konate at the end, having grown increasingly tired of his headloss moments. LFC finished the ’24 season with Quansah and VVD as the pairing against Fulham, Spurs, Villa, Wolves, West Ham. The only exception was Everton, when Konate played. The only one they lost was Everton. You’d hope that a DoF coming in and charged with a degree of long term thinking, would guage the value of Quansah as a potential future stalwart, or experiment to continue. Instead, that DoF gauged the value of Quansah in terms of PSR and how that nominally small sale could help offset huge recruitment. Looked bad then; Looks worse now.

I make it the right-call on departures for 5 first teamers, and 8 first team departures that are tinged with noise and / or regret. I don’t think there’s any part of the DoF job he did well.
Tom G

Talking about Liverpool sales…
Just watched Real Madrid vs Inter Milan and noticed 7 English people actually on the field for a game with two such high stature European giants – 7.

That was 4 players and the ref team – that’s very encouraging for English talent.

BTW F365 – Jones didn’t give the ball away the big defender shat the bed when he saw MBappe moving towards him and miscontrolled a good pass – more accuracy please and less bias!

Also TA didn’t have a bad game – he just looked a bit like he is learning the role – if that position clicks for him you will eat your words. It’s odd you stuck it into two ex Pool players – me being a gooner means I have no skin in the game – but please try to report what happened and not what you WISH happened.

Love to all for the new season
Londongooner in Oz (Reece James – he is a card!)

Whataboutery indeed
Yes, RHT/TS x, if a Chelsea defender had decided to carefully aim and kick Raya in the head, I can imagine the mailbox would have called it out because that would have been violent conduct. However, if it was an accident in a scramble then people will likely have had the reasonable reaction of ‘well, the ball was there to be won, there was a bit of a kerfuffle and unfortunately, Raya got the worst of it’.

Of course you’d have got the few odd ones that would have tried to make out like it was the turning point of the match or, even worse, the proper weirdos who make wildly outlandish statements because their bizarre, all-consuming hatred of a man that has the temerity to be a good football manager doing things differently pipe up but, you know, that’s why the mailbox is like a box of chocolates. Sadly, it’s becoming more and more like the Celebrations box that has been open for a couple of weeks – you do know what you’re going to get and you don’t really want it.
Stew

Fanmail for a Mailbox regular
Look, I’ve been writing into this site since 1997 because I was addicted to the balanced coverage this site gave to all teams. I’ve written a couple of thoughtful mails recently that you didn’t publish, that’s fine but I respect this site as a diplomatic football site with many intellectual contributors, not just through writing to the mailbox but also in reading the comments too. I appreciate that I’ve written some very outlandish mails mainly because I was angry or bored or dare I say tipsy, bearing in mind I’ve had to retire early.

However, I want to direct my criticism to your new Stewie Griffin who ironically isn’t just anti Arsenal but also anti Liverpool too. Not sure, if I haven’t been aware of him being critical of other major clubs. He probably is.

What I would say to RHT/TS…AKA Stewie Griffin! Seriously speaking Mr RHS, you’re speaking a load of ‘Cobblers’ ..do you understand my humour? How’s Chris Hogg doing? Northampton Town play very basic tactics using a low block defence and converting into a 5-3-2 counter attack…known as ‘kick and run!’ Hogg wants to introduce a more technical approach to his teams approach, like Arteta has.

Now, you’ve been condemning Arsenal and Arteta for being a boring team. So far Arsenal has scored six goals from open play and not one from a set piece. The game versus Chelsea was very entertaining but you still want to condemn Arsenal. I suggest, as the troll yoiare, go on a childish Facebook site and leave this Mailbox to adults. I promise as the elderly bloke I am, I’ll offer constructive comments going forward.

Next year Football365 will be your 30th anniversary. I hope you’re going to do something special about it! 👍
Chris, Croydon

Support for Mike Dean punishment
Badwolf’s letter about Mike Dean was fabulous, and I agree with everything he said. I just wanted to add a little line to suggest that this kind of topic is the kind of thing which needs to unite all football fans, regardless of club loyalties. If Adam Clery is right and the Man Utd vs West Brom match in 2016 has been correctly identified as one of the, or THE, match where Mike Dean decided he was going to be grossly unprofessional and it resulted in a match with curious decisions, unsafe challenges, and post-match complaints about the standard of the refereeing, then this has to transcend tribal partisanship.

Arsenal fans have been lamenting for 10+ years about Mike Dean. We were famous for it. We had a string of really, frankly, odd decisions go against us and the beloved F365 Mailbox was often awash with Gunners on a Monday morning complaining ANGRILY about Mike Dean. AGAIN. Naturally, the response was “Arsenal Conspiracy rofl” (or words to that effect). I would argue that Arsenal fans, who watched the Arsenal matches, and paid extra scrutiny to Mike Dean who we already didn’t trust, were probably right. There was always something off with him. Always something… dishonest… about him. Sky, TNT and BBC punditry would gloss over the anger & bemusement of the fans because it didn’t suit them to bring in to question the integrity of the Premier League.

And it’s not just Mike Dean (although it’s usually Mike Dean). Over the years you have various fanbases who dread having a particular referee officiating their games. Refs who the fans will never forgive or forget some frankly bizarre and oft’ assumed dishonest decision given against them. This includes the age of VAR where we have already witnessed multiple instances of officials “forgetting” to draw lines on a replay. How can they forget to draw a line? That’s literally their one job.

Anyway, that turned into a rant. Great mail from Badwolf, and I also hope that Mike Dean and/or the referees as a whole, are investigated.
Dale May, Swindon Wengerite

The Invincible Principle
Can we just put something out there now in light of the ridiculous discussion on Sky Sports in the wake of Arsenal’s win over Chelsea?

Arsenal supporters do not think the team will go unbeaten this season.

We do not think we’ll win a Quadruple.

We just think we have a very good team that should probably win a trophy this year.

Thanks,
Doug, AFC, Belfast

Messi in the mix as usual
Looks like Football365 England ladder has been on a number of people’s reading list. They’ve gotten on the Phil Neville (50) bandwagon, nominating Messi for Ballon D’or. Will he ever not be nominated.
Dave, Kilkenny