Evolution of Football: From Magic to Mechanics

Since the beginning of this amazing sport, so much has changed in football. Some of the most notable changes include the playing style of players, the tactics of teams, the transfer market, the tournaments, and a lot more. And with these changes, new problems and new ways to play the game have come up. I’ll be talking about what has changed and how it has changed in football with examples and reasons. So, let’s get started.

Players and Teams

Let’s talk about how successful players initially played and how their playing style has changedsince. First, let’s look at the legendary Brazilians and how popular they used to be. In the past, the game was all about skill, which gave Brazilians a major advantage. How can we confirm that? Brazil has won 5 World Cups and 9 Copa Americas in their history, which is the most World Cups won by any national team. Four of those World Cups were won before the 2000s. Their last World Cup win was in 2002, which was 22 years ago.

So, it seems like Brazil has been heavily affected by the evolution of the game. You might say that a lot of quality Brazilian footballers have still come out after the 2000s, but it’s still not even close to the old Brazilian players. Let’s make a comparison.Brazilian footballers who played most of their careers before the 2010s include Pele, Ronaldo Nazario, Ronaldinho, Garrincha, Rivaldo, Romario, Zico, Jairzinho, Socrates, Cafu, Roberto Carlos, and more legendary names. Brazilian footballers who played most of their careers after the 2010s are Neymar, Kaka, Marcelo, Thiago Silva, Dani Alves, Casemiro, Vinicius Junior, and others. As you can unfortunately see, the greatest talent producer—Brazil, has fallen behind. It still produces some great potential, but most of them can’t reach anywhere close to Ronaldo Nazario, Ronaldinho, or even Neymar.

Another thing to talk about is the type of players that are currently going extinct. For example, it looks like we’re not going to see players like Robert Lewandowski anymore. When was the last time you saw a complete forward with amazing technical ability, great vision, decent strength and shot power, and insane heading accuracy? The closest thing we have now is Haaland. While he lacks in technique, he makes up for it with speed. But isn’t it worrying that there’s only one player who is above average and fits the same player type as Lewandowski? Do these players not work efficiently in modern football anymore? Let’s take a look. Lewandowski, at the age of 36, scored 14 goals and assisted 2 in 13 matches this season for Barcelona (at the time of writing this). So, it’s pretty clear that these players are still needed and are doing their jobs well.

As the game changes, we’ve started to see a less creative style of football. We used to have players that could create magic out of nowhere, players like Hazard, Messi, Cristiano, Neymar, and more. Some new players are slowly stepping up and trying to bring that magic back. If you’ve watched Euro 2024 or even just the current Spain national team games, you’ll see that Lamine Yamal and Nico Williams remind us of those players. I’m not saying Yamal and Nico are the best in the world, far from it. But the creativity, excitement, and surprise they bring to the game reminds us of the old days of football when things were more unpredictable and exciting. Don’t get me wrong, the game is still fun to watch. But it doesn’t feel the same anymore. There was a different charm brought to the game by the players earlier.

What Changed in Tactics

Let’s talk about some revolutionary changes in football. Football used to be more creative and relied more on individual skills. Now, it’s become a game where even a small mistake can get punished badly. Of course, this doesn’t apply to all teams, but the bigger teams usually play a more possession-based style.With more possession comes more structure, and that leads to fewer creative or risky plays. So this has a huge impact on how players play and grow in certain teams.

Now let’s talk about managers. Every manager has a style they like to apply to their team. If we look at the managers who changed football history, most of them created new and impactful tactics. Let’s take Pep Guardiola, who is sometimes referred to as “the reason football has fallen off” by some football fans today. His tactics, as we said before, are based on teamwork and discipline.But didn’t someone already use similar tactics before Pep? Yes—partially.

Jose Mourinho is another legendary manager. He achieved something incredible by taking a Portuguese club (Porto)—which is not easy, and winning the Champions League. He has also won many other trophies and made history.

Jose Mourinho’s infamous “park the bus” tactic worked well for many years and may have inspired newer tactical ideas. Mourinho’s Chelsea won the Premier League back to back in 2004/2005 and 2005/2006 and only conceded 37 goals in two seasons. To compare, Manchester City in the 2020–2021 season became Premier League champions by a 12-point margin and conceded 32 goals.Conceding such a low number of goals in a league like the Premier League is an amazing achievement. And unlike many of today’s managers, Mourinho still allowed creativity in attack. discipline was only for defense.

The Transfer Market

As you can imagine, the transfer market plays a huge role in football. We talked about tactics, but without the right players, no tactic can work at its best. And the transfer market has changed drastically over the years. The numbers have exploded, especially after some big events. The most notable one was Neymar’s transfer.

Neymar, after being transferred to Barcelona, was on fire and was wanted by many big clubs. He was sold for a record-breaking fee of €222M in 2017 to Paris Saint-Germain.

This made past big numbers like €45M seem small. Messi and Ronaldo, in their peak years, were valued at €180M and €150M. Now, Haaland and Vinicius Junior are valued at around €200M. Two of the greatest footballers ever were valued less than players who might not even make the top 100 players of all time.

Another factor that changed the transfer market is the involvement of wealthy countries like Saudi Arabia. Cristiano Ronaldo is 39 years old and, as you may know, the older a player gets, the lower their market value and wage usually becomes—because they’re no longer developing and have physical limitations. So normally, older players don’t earn that much. But the 39-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo earns €200M a year for playing in Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, Mbappe, arguably one of the best in the world right now, earns €31M per year. So what we call the “finished version” of Cristiano Ronaldo earns 6.4 times more than Kylian Mbappe just because of the league he’s in.

These massive differences in wages and fees force other clubs to also start offering huge amounts.

Tournaments and Competitions

Tournaments have always been a major part of football. Most players, clubs, and managers are judged by how many and what kind of trophies they’ve won. There are various tournaments and some of the most famous ones include: Champions League, Europa League, Conference League, Euros, World Cup, and Copa America. These tournaments, especially the World Cup and Champions League—are known as the “big stage” where the top clubs and nations compete in a group stage and then move on to knockouts until there’s only one winner.

There are a lot of differences and changes between tournaments. The first major club tournament was the European Champions League. Later in 1992, it was separated into the Europa League and Champions League. This allowed more clubs to participate, especially those who couldn’t qualify for or got knocked out of the Champions League.

Here’s how the old Champions League and Europa League format worked:

• 4 teams were placed into 8 groups by random draw

• Clubs from the same nation couldn’t be in the same group

• Every team played 6 matches in total. 2 against each team (one home and one away)

• A win = 3 points

• A draw = 1 point

• A loss = 0 points

• The top 2 teams in each group advanced to the knockout stage

• The 3rd-placed team entered the Europa League playoffs

• The 4th was eliminated

• Knockout matches were drawn again, played over 2 legs, and the final was a single game

National tournaments follow the same knockout style but with just 3 group matches.

In the new format, the group stage is replaced by a league stage with 36 teams (not in national tournaments):

• Each team plays 8 matches against different opponents (4 home, 4 away)

• After all matches are played, the top 8 teams go directly to the next round

• Teams ranked 9th to 24th enter a playoff

• For example: 9th and 10th play against 23rd or 24th, 11th and 12th against 21st or 22nd, and so on

• After the playoffs, the usual knockout stage continues

  
  

In conclusion, football has changed a lot, and it will definitely keep changing, hopefully for the better. I just wanted to touch the surface of things. There’s so much more happening in the background. But these are the most basic and important changes I could share with you. I hope you learnt something new, reading this.

Written by: Efe Turgutoğlu.