Although I picked Slovakia to finish last, I think they can get a top 2 finish in their group. Belgium's defense already shaky.
I do wonder if TV broadcasters will start to go in a different direction with pundits at some stage. I feel like discontent with the standard is at an all-time high and with how pervasive social media is now I think that will be more obvious to broadcasters than ever. The ironic thing is that these big name former players will probably demand a pretty significant fee for their punditry so broadcasters really aren't getting value for money. They could get much more insightful input for a much cheaper price if they cared less about the magnitude of the personality.
Belgium have looked terrible. it’s been nice to see the lesser fancied teams trying to play good football rather than camping out on their 18 yard box.
Pretty accurate comparison. A combined XI between those two sides would be pretty interesting. It's funny because I always think of that England team to be utter trash on paper but I think it was probably on a somewhat similar level (on paper) to this Belgian side. Cahill, Gerrard, Sterling and Sturridge at a minimum get in this Belgian XI imo. Probably Baines too even if only for better balance. My memory of 2014 is that we just didn't have the quality for a last 16/quarter-final run but when you look at some of the names there and the seasons they were coming off we really could have made it out of that group with a better manager. Nevermind ey.
Today … is why Southgate is justified at times playing like he does. These silly results don’t happen.
The problem is pundits work all year round so they can’t all be current coaches or tournaments would have a totally different line up to the domestic season. And current elite coaches are also pretty expensive as well if they currently working for a club not being available in the later stages due to pre season. And it’s always the issue of a coach giving a view on players they currently coach,
The prevalence and popularity of Micah Richards as a pundit suggests that isn't going to happen any time soon
Yeah, maybe not. He does feel like a bit of an outlier to me in terms of a well-liked pundit who also lacks insight though. Feels to me like most people are quite sick of the standard but that might just be my echo chamber. I'm not by any means suggesting Premier League managers should be on punditry panels every week. I don't think you have to look all that far to get a deeper level of insight than what's currently provided by most UK pundits. They don't necessarily have to ban ex players either, they could just raise the bar. The big names seem to feel like they don't need to do any research because their reputation makes their voice valuable, whereas someone like Andros Townsend quite clearly does a lot of homework and gives the sense that he knows what he's on about.
In 2020, Sebastián "Loco" Abreu was player-coach at Boston RIver and also journalist at Sunday morning TV show Polideportivo. He would break news that the club's coach would appoint Abreu as starter or bench himself
BEL 🇧🇪0-1🇸🇰 SVK (20') #EURO2024 For the FIRST time in ALL Euros history, the first 26 goals of an edition have been scored by 26 different players (in the Euro 2016, the first goalscorer was repeated in number 26).— MisterChip (English) (@MisterChiping) June 17, 2024