Quote from: Daniel91 on February 18, 2023, 02:38:29 PM

Quote from: buwaytress on February 15, 2023, 05:24:06 PM

Quote from: Daniel91 on February 15, 2023, 01:27:07 PM

However, the best football is still played in Europe, both national team and club football, and Europe still invests the most in football.

I might agree the best football is with club football, but I actually can't say I watch a lot of non-European football these days. But a lot of that is because of non-European players playing in those leagues.

But national teams? Surely the World Cups prove that the home of the best football is arguable. I think I've seen plenty of the past 2 or 3, and even when stretching back my memory to 1998 and 2002, some of the worst football is played by European teams, the very best from South America, while we get exciting moments from Asia and Africa.

Of course, what is "best" is subjective. I personally like physicality and positive play. I watched some of the worst top football in recent memory seeing England, Germany, Belgium, even Spain minus their first game... but I loved how Japan served powerful dogged battles in every game. Hell, even Morocco was adrenaline-inducing most of their games. I believe it's more common than that small sample.

There is a very simple way to recognize the best national teams in the world, and that is based on the results at the world cups. That is the only objective criterion and everything else is subjective.
Yes, I can agree with you that Morocco and Japan played well at the World Cup in Qatar and achieved some surprising victories, but in the end it is obvious that the best football was played by Argentina and France, and that the best football players were Messi and Mbappe.
At every world cup, some national team surprises and achieves some unexpected victory, but only the national teams that continuously achieve top results, such as Brazil, Argentina, France, Spain, can be considered a football superpower.
However, I agree that the difference in quality between Europe and other continents is slowly decreasing.
Germany seems to have dropped out of this group of top national teams, so this EURO will be very interesting from that point of view. Will we finally see the return of Germany to the top of European and world football?

Why is it just the World Cups? Wouldn't you agree that a team that wins one or even two consecutive EURO tournaments probably also is a pretty strong team? Wink

Even though when France lost against Argentina I still believe that they are the strongest team in Europe and probably in the whole world. You can still lose even when you are stronger on paper. Argentina lost against Saudi Arabia but that doesn't mean anything. Germany will have to change lots of things before they can be counted into the circle of the strongest contenders for the EURO title. Since the cup will be in Germany they will be extra motivated, but they will still need a higher quality in the team.