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Such is the disillusionment towards world football’s governing bodies that the Nations League was met with first bemusement and then scepticism when UEFA announced its inception for the start of the 2018/19 season.
Had those money-grabbing big thinkers found a way of making international football even more tedious? Was the strange structure of the competition specifically designed to make football lovers apathetic by their own confusion? Did any of the motives include a genuine interest in improving the experience of the everyday fan?
To some extent, that initial fear of the unknown was inevitable. But fast forward a few months and, for England fans at least, the Nations League has brought almost excitement the summer’s World Cup. Intriguing, sometimes thrilling, encounters against top quality international sides, a vehicle for genuine growth that will better prepare the Three Lions for future tournaments, and non-summer international games that felt truly significant. Such incidents have been exceptionally rare down the years.
And England’s finish to the Group Stage, pulling off a late comeback against Croatia through Jesse Lingard and Harry Kane to qualify for the final four, was symptomatic of a tournament that has completely changed the wider perceptions of itself in an incredibly short space of time.
Of course, the experiences of each country have varied significantly and England’s ranks amongst the most enjoyable, but every nation has been given something valuable to take away from the tournament – and every neutral has been privy to a wealth of competitive, engaging encounters between sides of similar ability.
When Jamie Carragher described England’s 3-2 win over Spain as having the quality and atmosphere of a Champions League night, even one of the Three Lions’ greatest victories on foreign soil for many years couldn’t mask the dismay. There was certainly some snobbery about the reaction, perhaps because England fans for so long have understandably made criticism of international football their default setting. How could it compare to the Champions League, the most illustrious competition in the world?
And yet, in terms of competitiveness, there isn’t a competition quite like the Nations League. It remains to be seen how the subsequent edition will pan out now relegation and promotion has shuffled the teams around, but certainly at the point of origin every group included three or four countries of almost perfectly equal stature, and the complexion of the groups themselves meant that everything was still to play for until the final whistle of the last game. You can’t say the same thing about Champions League groups, which nearly always contain a designated whipping boy and guaranteed first-placer.
In fact, the statistics from the group stages of the Nations League compared to last season’s Champions League proper are incredibly telling. 51% of all Nations League wins were decided by one goal, whereas just 24% were decided by three or more; in the Champions League though, a greater proportion of wins were sealed by a margin of three or more than just the one. Likewise, although there were comparatively more scoreless draws in the Nations League, the percentage of goals in the final 15 minutes was pretty much identical in both competitions.
The Champions League provided more goals per game last season, and inevitably the quality of football will be much greater than what international teams can produce for a variety of reasons. But the key here, for the experience of the spectator, is the level of competitiveness – very few Nations League games were dead rubbers and the flurry of late goals obliges viewers to keep watching until the final whistle.
In the Champions League, though, opponents proved to be much further apart on a lot more occasions and while the quality is still there, the intensity and unpredictability isn’t necessarily.
Check out the video below to see how Brazil fans reacted to being asked how Cristiano Ronaldo would peform for them in a hilarious prank by Playmaker FC…
Thus, it becomes a question of what we watch football for; are we here for all the tricks and flicks produced by mega-millionaires made all the easier to pull off by playing considerably inferior sides, or are we here for games that may not always be pretty but nearly always mean something, fought between two teams that could both realistically win, lose or draw?
To some extent that comes down to personal preference. But if you were to place a succession of Nations League and Champions League fixtures on a roulette wheel, the former being black and the latter being red, which is more likely to deliver an exciting, enjoyable and close-fought game? Despite the initial scepticism, the Nations League is at the very least giving the Champions League a good run for its money.
