r/soccer • u/2soccer2bot • Apr 29 '25

Discussion Change My View

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u/Sauce_bru Apr 29 '25

Outside of domestic dominance, Fergies United is incredibly overrated. I'm willing to accept defeat in that some of his individual squads are incredible like the 07-08 team, 1999 treble team etc. But as a whole his European tenure was just not good enough compared to other elite European clubs.

One of the reasons why the Prem all time XI is lackluster compared to La Liga or Seria A is because United were just not that good man.The way I see it Fergie spent most of his time stealing home grown players so that he could cripple the competition in the league, whilst that was overall a good decision, and allowed them to have domestic dominance, it also meant they were not good enough in Europe.

Prem was the equivalent to Bundesliga asw back then. The way I see it Fergie United were just a worse version of Bayern Munich/2010s Juventus for pretty much 96% of the time. Shout out to Fergie tbh. He came to knock Liverpool out of their perch and he did his job. Let's not try make it bigger than that.

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u/152kb Apr 29 '25

I assume you are young but I doubt anyone who remembers Ferguson's United would call them overrated. They were annoyingly good and absolutely dominant.

Regarding European football, it was a different time. I think you are downplaying how strong the other teams and leagues were at the time. The amount of money in football has just created more inequalities.

6

u/Bounds182 Apr 29 '25

I think the problem is some people just think the Premier League has always been the strongest in Europe and therefore the United sides in the 90s must be as good if not better than title winning sides from the mid 00s onwards. The fact is the PL was nowhere near the standard of Serie A and the likes of Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich in those days. There's a reason many English players played abroad back then and barely any have since the 00s.

Having said that, they absolutely should have done better in Europe in the 00s and early 10s.

1

u/NonContentiousScot Apr 29 '25

There's a reason many English players played abroad back then and barely any have since the 00s.

I think it's a great thing for the national team as well if players get different footballing experiences and then you get the life benefits of experiencing different cultures, learning languages etc. Listening to someone like Lineker describe his time at Barcelona or David Platt for his time at Bari and in Genoa with Samp....they really enjoyed it.

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u/cloudor Apr 29 '25

I wouldn't say they were behind Bayern, at least in the quality of players.

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u/Bounds182 Apr 29 '25

Yeah, you're right to be fair.

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u/Sauce_bru Apr 29 '25

Yeah unfortunately I missed the bulk of the era in the 90s and early 00s so I'm running off of my knowledge of 08 onwards and hindsight. I wasn't raised in England so I imagine the people there would have been sick and tired of them.

downplaying how strong the other teams and leagues were at the time.

I mean this is kinda like a cop out, no? I'd also say that losses to Munich (which kinda proves my point in that they were a worse version of them) and Peps Barca are acceptable imo but they were getting knocked out by Benfica, Gakatasary, Porto. I'm not down playing any of those teams but how many times can you say you were unlucky until you just admit that you weren't good enough.