Around that time, the 2024 Copa America (hosted by COMNEBOL, played in CONCACAF's USA) started as well, and basically from that very second the much ballyhooed Summer of Soccer (granted, only the US would've called it this...) started hitting some cracks.
Frist, the goals massively dried up at the Euros. Little by little, the darlings of the first set of games, or the darlings of the group, were picked off one by one. We had some great on paper matchups that went absolutely nowhere, like England's successive slogs through the group stage, Round of 16 and Quarterfinal, and of course the biggest disaster of all of it: France v Portugal's utterly boring quarterfinal that went to penalties.
It's not to say some soccer is worse than none at all. The fans stayed into it. It was loud, it was chaotic. It was a glorious display of fandom, but also had a group of teams that were playing boring, drab football but winning and advancing, and their fans basically being put off by all of it.
Not making any of it better was so much that went wrong with the Copa. From the fields being a constant source of scrutiny, to the always controversial officianting, to the rowdiness and "gamesmanship" of intra-COMNEBOL games, to the empty seats because they played in 60,000 - 75,000 seat football stadiums. It just felt off. There was some greatness, mostly tied to Uruguay and Colombia playing great football, but all of it put off by the fact COMNEBAL rigs the format so that Brazil v. Argentina would always be a potential final, and the resulting lopsidedness of the draw.
Ultimately, stories like Canada's run to the semifinals was fun, but made for some rather drab knockout games - basically anything on the Argentina half of the draw. It crested then in a pretty meh final, made at all notable from Messi's ugly ankle injury, through to the goal to win it/ A fine ending, but a rough game.
The Euro's ended similarly, with a surprisingly well played game in the final despite the clear best team (Spain) taking on that mess of Southgate-ball. In fact, what was really offputting was the idea of France and England make it that far despite playing truly awful, negative soccer at times. England rode the luck there to the very end, but worse than that even was France, again despite all their talent, leaning into to Didier Deschamps' worst tendencies - making the semifinal without scoring a goal from open play (excludign own goals). Just awful stuff.
I wrote in that post about how good the first set of games that one of the aspects that helped was that we had left the Pep way of playing a while away - no team went out to dominate 80% of the possession. Sure, some games went in that direction - say when Georgia was involved, but they also were so explosive, fast, entertaining on the counter. The endless pass-pass-pass that got stale when not played by Pep's Barca (and even then got a bit dour at times) was gone, replaced by something better. That still remains true, but even then there was way too much defensiveness at times later on.
The sport will recover, but there's a weird sense as we head into the two year sprint through to the 2026 World Cup. Some of that is the US hosting it, after the problems that cropped up in the Copa. Granted, I'm fully on the #COMNEBOLSFAULT on most of it, but still the empty seats, the lack of relative noise and passion compared to what was going on in Germany, there are some qeustions for sure. This was the first time both tournaments would line up, excluding 2016 when the Copa held the Centenario (a one-off tournament). COMNEBOL did this for a areason - we will have these Summers of Soccer again, as early as 2028. I do hope we can keep the early momentum going that time.
