The Undroppables: How star power is sapping the Euro 2024 favourites
Ronaldo, Mbappe and Bellingham have attained elevated status in the Portugal, France and England teams but the star-centric approach doesn’t seem to be working at Euro 2024.
Here’s a question: which are the teams at Euro 2024 who have the biggest individual stars? Cristiano Ronaldo makes Portugal an obvious choice. Kylian Mbappe of France is probably next in line. And then there is Jude Bellingham, England’s great hope and now the face of advertising campaigns for everything from drinks and boots to underwear.
Ok, next question: which teams at Euro 2024 have been the most disappointing, relative to pre-tournament expectations? You can probably see where I’m going here. But it’s undeniable that, ahead of the quarter-finals this weekend, the overwhelming let-downs have been those carrying the most prominent personalities.
Not all for the same reasons, but Portugal and especially France and England have been much less than the sum of their parts. The Portuguese remain painfully in thrall to the whims of Ronaldo, despite his waning powers. Didier Deschamps has unabashedly built his team around Mbappe only to see his impact curtailed by a broken nose. And while Bellingham has provided England’s most decisive moments, he too has been culpable for the team’s turgid displays.
In fairness to the respective national team managers, you can understand the principle of building around extraordinary talents. At the last World Cup, Lionel Messi and the sheer inevitability of narrative force carried Argentina to victory. And the side who pushed them closest were France, almost entirely thanks to Mbappe’s stunning hat-trick.
International coaches do not have the luxury of endless training sessions in which to drill intricate patterns of play like club managers do, so setting out to create a fundamentally competent team who rely on extraordinary individuals to provide the match-winning spark makes a certain amount of sense.
In the club game it is different. System coaches are firmly in vogue, with Pep Guardiola the archetype who has spawned a legion of imitators. So too former rival Jurgen Klopp and the Red Bull high-pressing style developed by Ralf Rangnick. These teams do not revolve around one star; instead the coach – or their system, at least – are the most important element.
It is notable that the teams at Euro 2024 who have impressed most are those with a more defined system: Spain, who have updated their traditional possession-based game by adding speedy wide forwards; Germany, under former Red Bull disciple Julian Nagelsmann; and Austria, albeit their defensive frailties cost them in their last-16 tie with Turkey. None of these teams rely on star quality but have coalesced into something greater than the sum of their parts.
So how have they achieved it when France, Portugal and England have failed? It helps Spain that they draw on a rich lineage of playing in a similar way. Germany struggled at first but now appear to have adapted to Nagelsmann’s didactic approach, while many of Austria’s players were familiar with Rangnick’s style from their own times at Red Bull clubs.
Nevertheless, if they can do it then why can’t France, Portugal and England? After all, most of Gareth Southgate’s first XI play for Premier League clubs who favour a high press and usually dominate possession. But that might mean subordinating Bellingham who, by design or his own self-evident importance, has joined Mbappe and Ronaldo among The Undroppables.
Perhaps Southgate, Deschamps and Portugal’s Roberto Martinez will be proved right, just like Argentina and France were in Qatar. But as each prepares for their quarter finals, the issue ought to be food for thought.
