Day -703. WorldCup2018
The death of the natural centre forward. Spain played much of the last World Cup without one, Portugal had only one in their squad for Euro 2016 and the top scorer at the Euros was more of a "number 10". Portugal relied on Ronaldo for goals and Wales on Gareth Bale, both former wingers, wide men who provided the goals for the strikers. Wales had Hal Robson Kanu playing up front, him of the wonder goal against Belgium, who scored 3 goals all season in England...playing as a winger.
Portugal's hero in yesterday's final was their only centre forward who regularly gets a few minutes when a match is usually won already. Eder was a flop in his few months with Swansea this season, where he couldn’t do any better than their other striker of dodgy quality, Gomis. It is a great story that he scored the winner. It is an interesting tactical story that he was never relied on to be the goal scorer for his team.
The whole Euro 2016 left me with a feeling of too much emphasis on teams stopping each from scoring rather than trying to score much. While there was an overall excitement, there was also a lot of frustration at the repetition of attacks breaking down in front of packed defences. A good old fashioned centre forward may not have made a difference, but it would have nice to have seen somebody like Lineker banging in a few goals, or Paolo Rossi, or Fernando Torres, or Van Basten. Mioslav Klose was still scoring goals for Germany when he was, what, 50?
And the teams that did play old school didn't get much from their forward men: England with Kane and Vardy, Ibrahimovich for Sweden, Giroud for France, Pelle for Italy.
Maybe France knew what they were doing in 1984 when their famous number 10, Michel Platini, scored 9 goals in the Euros. But he was a bit special.
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