Since 1986, has there been a better NT Tournament performance than Zidane's Euro 2000?

Thanks for mentioning griezmann 2016.giroud and payet were very good too as far as I remember.All those 3 performances are a bit forgotten I guess because France didn't lift the trophy in the end. Similar to haller 1966.if west Germany won, he might have been held a hero.

 

Wouldn't wanna get too far off track. We're talking like best ever NT tournaments as opposed to underrated

 

I never thought of it that way while comparing. To me, it was a match-up between 2 strong teams, Portugal's golden generation vs World Champions France. I thought Portugal's defense wasn't that bad; they conceded only in 1 match in the tournament before facing France (against England). Obviously, they were an offensive team, and their defense wasn't at France's level. So yea, on paper, Figo had a more uphill task than Zidane. Overall, that Portugal team was great to watch while Zidane was poetry in motion.

 

I notice conincidentally some Portugal Euro 2000 ratings among the most recent posts on Football-ratings Blogspot
Football Ratings (football-ratings.blogspot.com)
Football Ratings: Portugal ratings in the Euro 2000 (football-ratings.blogspot.com)
I suppose it might be said that Zidane had less help in terms of the midfield creating (Pires came on as sub in the Final to play down the left though of course), but on the other hand more of a supporting base behind him.

 

FYI, tournament averages like this are based on total goals scored in each game (i.e. by both teams combined). So the actual tournament average for individual teams was half that—i.e. 1.37 goals per game. The Netherlands were the only team that scored more goals per match in that tournament than France (due largely to a 6-1 win). Of course, them scoring a lot is in part a reflection of Zidane playing well, but just wanted to clarify this.

 

FWIW, here’s a link to Kicker player ratings for Euro tournaments. It starts at Euro 2000 (though there’s ratings for German players in Euro 1996). https://www.kicker.de/europameisterschaft/topspieler/2000

Unsurprisingly, it does validate Zidane 2000 and Iniesta 2012 as being standout performances (though, amongst finalists, it has Nesta higher rated than Zidane—not something I put a ton of stock in though, since comparing defenders and attackers is pretty apples and oranges and individual defenders usually aren’t as impactful even if they played well). Others might find things in these rankings they find interesting, so seemed worth posting.

 

It was me that brought him up, but I brought it up because I actually think Griezmann 2016 was one of the best ever NT tournaments, at least if we are talking the post-1986 era, as this thread is about. In terms of Euros, as I mentioned, I put it on the same general level as Zidane 2000 and Iniesta 2012, and probably below Van Basten 1988. If we talk about World Cup post-1986, I think we’re really just looking at Romario 1994, R9 2002, Messi 2022, and Mbappe 2022 that have a good argument to be at or above that level (with central midfield performances like Pirlo 2006, Xavi 2010, and Modric 2018 being in the mix but different), and then Copa America performances at or above that level probably just come down to 2 or 3 Messi performances (2021, 2016, and perhaps 2015), and maybe a couple others from the 1990s and early 2000s (maybe Adriano 2004?), but I’m admittedly less familiar with the 1990s and early 2000s Copa Americas. So I think it’s squarely in the mix of this discussion. That said, I just made a thread about Griezmann as a NT player, so if anyone wants to discuss that specifically, then that’s perhaps a better place for it.

 

My comment was more about the likes of Giroud, as much as I like him, and I swear only for footballing reasons

 

Nesta was majestic in 2000.

 

Considering that the overall quality of top NT rosters has consistently gone downhill since that tournament, and Zidane was able to be an absolute standout even in such a high quality event, itself says something about how good of a performance his Euro 00 was. Prior to that tournament going back to 86, although the quality was generally high but a lot of great players underperformed or missed tournaments due to injury or other reasons.

Personally, I can’t think of any player having had such a unanimously acknowledged great tournament performance while having multiple competitors also playing some of their best football for their NTs during the same competition. That is something which elevates this performance to a whole different level IMHO.

 

Agreed, but a lot of players couldn’t play to their potential or full ability in WC 06, Zidane was an exception then. Euro 00 was a rare case where the competitors were strong, mostly all of them played to their potential and yet one player stood out.

 

I thought this thread might be the most relevant one to post some of the data graphs I noticed for some older Euros players (there's not many and no full data set available though it seems before WhoScored started showing it, unlike for the World Cups)
This is the main page
European Championship History Told Through Data | The Analyst
These are the graphs for the following players (or matches), relating to specific stats
Alan Shearer 1996

Marco van Basten 1988

Francesco Toldo 2000

Netherlands vs Italy 2000

 

Not really sure it makes sense to think that quality of NT rosters has gone down over time, even since 2000. We’d expect the opposite, given higher populations, better football infrastructure and talent scouting, etc. In any event, I don’t really want to go down a rabbit hole that this could cause, but I’d quickly also note that outshining Mbappe 2022 is surely more impressive than outshining anyone’s performance at Euro 2000. Quite hard to outshine one of the world’s top few mega-stars getting 8 goals in a tournament (along with 2 assists), including a hat-trick in the finals. I think what we’re talking about here is more akin to something like Iniesta outshining Pirlo when Pirlo played amazingly in 2012 (as well as outshining his own teammate Xavi, who IMO had a better tournament in 2012 than he did in 2008 when he won player of the tournament, outshining prime Cristiano Ronaldo when Ronaldo’s team made a deep run, etc.).

 

That defense conceded an enormous amount of chances in the semi final game. Two penalties, Bergkamp hit the post after moving past Luliano and Nesta.

I am not saying Nesta was bad by any means, but majestic and impregnable is the other extreme. He was personally responsible for conceding one penalty, and escaped two other penalties.

The referee was a German (who selected that?) and way too lenient for Toldo his movements off the line.

All the amoebas and 'fans' got the winner they wanted (just as with Argentina in 2022).

Then twenty years later Wilson and pals can make their usual dismissive, haughty and contemptuous remarks.

"The stadium went quiet for a few nanoseconds and you could clearly hear that thud..."

Bergkamp's effort off the post and more from Italy 0 Netherlands 0 (2000) on this week's Greatest Games podcast.

LISTEN: https://t.co/vJVpoN5FsG
WATCH: https://t.co/x1fgfmff41 pic.twitter.com/SxhqqTBFdW

— The Blizzard (@blzzrd) June 30, 2021

 

I think Nesta was the best defender in the world for a brief period in the late 90s. Then he started getting injured a lot.

Looking at these Kicker ratings that lessthanjake brought, reinforces my idea that Chiellini is an underrated defender (best player in euro 21).

 

He did give away a pk but overall a strong performance. Not to mention Italy went down to 10 man way too early. That made thing harder to defend against a strong team like Holland 2000.

 

Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim.
Assalamu'alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh to Muslim.
Good day to Others.

One of the contender:

Riquelme's 2007 Copa America:
5 matches
5 goals
3 assists
Goal + Assist Ratio = 1.60

Wallahu a'lam.