u/ooziemane123

It's been about 9 months since I last played and I don't remember raiders being as cracked as they are now, they aren't like super hacky shooting you the second you peek but if I do peek them, I feel like they headshot me almost every time if I don't go back into cover quick enough. I feel like the AI in general has become much harder aside from scavs, not complaining as I always wanted them to be harder but I was wondering if I'm just misremembering how hard they were or if this is a genuine change that was made.

what i mean by that is for years it became more and more about systems, structure and tactical discipline, but now almost every top team is coached that way. pep was the biggest catalyst for this change, but when everyone on the opposing team is organised, presses well and knows exactly where to be it doesn't really work the way it did in the late 2010s and early 2020s. you can even see this in how pep's tactical approach changed over the years.

i feel like i've started to notice over the last two years that individualism is coming back into football, players like kvara, yamal, olise, doue, musiala obviously still follow tactical plans but they're also given the freedom to unlock or figure out a defence in their own way, they're allowed to dribble through multiple players and take risks, they're allowed to be creative.

i feel like up until recently, a lot of players had this individualism trained out of them or they never developed it to begin with because from such a young age they were taught to play so rigidly and robotically. saka is a great example of this type of player, he came up when football shifted. he's not "robotic" but he's an efficiency winger, he has a handful of things that he can do and he does them repeatedly, he might run to the touchline and cross it in or cut inside and take a shot. he uses simple body feints, timing and acceleration to beat his man as opposed to any sort of flair, creativity or dribbling skills. he's effective but if you're struggling to break down a defence you couldn't rely on him to come up with a moment of magic or create danger from nothing like someone like hazard could've done in the past. but this isn't to say saka isn't a great player, he is.

so i'm not saying that tactics are going away, they're here to stay. but i feel like the grip is being loosened a little and things are becoming more balanced where individualism can shine more than it's been allowed to in the last decade. i know this probably isn't a revolutionary thought but i just wanted to know what people think

like i said in the title why don't they have dynamics

surely? been a week since the last batch. do any leakers have any word on it?

Thought I'd clear something up, there's a lot of worry going around because of the statistic that Mexico have only lost twice at the Azteca since it was built in 1966. That's not true, they've lost there eleven times. They only have a single competitive win against a top side at the Azteca, that was against Brazil in 1999 which was a close 4-3 game. Outside of that, they've beaten a top side in friendly matches only twice, Brazil once in 1968 and West Germany once in 1985, the stat isn't even true but it also means next to nothing considering how rarely they actually play a top side and go on to beat them at that stadium.

They've lost to Costa Rica and Honduras in competitive games at the Azteca and the best opponent they regularly play at that stadium is the United States, who they have a record of 7-3-1 against which isn't all that surprising considering the United States were a weaker team than Mexico up until very recently.

I have no idea how this rumour got going but it's causing a narrative to be created by our own fans that Mexico will batter us silly at the Azteca even though it's based on a false statistic. We also have to get past DR Congo first anyway.

Whenever I watch any other nation except France or Argentina, it makes me realise that people dooming over England are blowing it way out of proportion. Portugal, Spain, Brazil, Morocco and Germany have all looked poor throughout the tournament. Germany battering Curacao means nothing and Scotland made Brazil look better than they've actually been. I would argue that we've performed better than every aforementioned team and struggled against low blocks like every other big team does. There's about three teams who are ahead of us as favourites who have been worse than us.

The other two favourites ahead of us, France and Argentina, are clearly a step above everyone else, including us, but that doesn't mean we can't beat them on our day. Tournament football is unpredictable, messy and scrappy. Just stop dooming over every little thing. We made it to a final in 2024 playing infinitely worse than this.

Argentina looked like getting knocked out in their group and went on to win the whole thing in the last World Cup. When we played a stronger team in Croatia, we were by far the better team and maybe put in the best performance of the entire tournament so far.

I was extremely surprised to learn that Radamel Falcao debuted in 1999 (he was 13 at the time) and is still playing in Colombia, which makes me think he's the highest profile footballer to have made their debut in the 90's who is still active today.

We all know the obvious one, Kazuyoshi Miura who debuted in 1986 and is 59, but he's an outlier in every sense.

Roque Santa Cruz still plays in Paraguay at 44, debuted in 1997.

Which has led me to wonder, are there any other notable names that are still active today that debuted in the 90's?