7 winning teams we loved to hate for their style of football: Greece, Houllier’s Liverpool… | OneFootball

Arsenal have come in for heavy criticism in 2025-26, leading the Premier League table with rudimentary tactics. They aren’t the first team in history to suffer this fate.

Winning might be everything for coaches and players, but the means in which success was achieved turned several champions into pantomime villains.

We’ve dusted off the history books and picked out seven successful teams we all loved to hate for their style of play.

Greece (2004)

In the words of The Guardian’s Barry Glendenning, Greece were “the only underdogs in history that everyone wants to see get beaten.”

Why? Their leech-style man-marking and reliance on set pieces saw them cut a swathe through Euro 2004 at the expense of more talented rivals.

After squeezing out Spain in the groups, Otto Rehhagel’s side beat France, the Czech Republic and Portugal to win the tournament, all by a 1-0 scoreline.

Euro 2004 was a competition notable for several under-performing galacticos (Beckham, Zidane, Raul, Figo) and the gnashing of teeth at the face-for-radio Greeks lifting the trophy carried on for years.

Spain (2012)

We are all sick of Spain by Euro 2012, as the European Championship and World Cup winners lifted their third successive trophy with a minimum of fuss.

Robbed of David Villa through injury before the tournament, Vicente Del Bosque frequently picked a team without a recognised striker.

Several of their matches were hard to watch, especially the quarter-final win over a feeble France and a shoot-out win over Portugal following a goalless semi-final.

Their Tiki Tika style split the internet, with fans either arguing it was tremendous or tedious. Crucially, both factions were incredibly pretentious about it all.

Spain did win over most fans with a comprehensive 4-0 win over Italy in the final. But everyone was delighted when they exited the 2014 World Cup after two matches, hammered by the Dutch and Chile.

Gerard Houllier’s Liverpool

Liverpool won an unprecedented cup treble in 2001, adding the UEFA Cup to both domestic cups under Houllier.

Less is remembered about the style of football itself, normally reliant on keeping it tight at the back and hoping Michael Owen poached a couple at the other end.

The BBC even managed to persuade UEFA to push the semi-final first leg with Barcelona back to accommodate EastEnders, all for the sake of a dire 0-0 stalemate.

Tellingly, Houllier sidelined Kop hero Robbie Fowler in favour of Emile Heskey to get the best out of Owen.

Effective? Yes. But Liverpool’s one-dimensional tactics eventually caught up with Houllier. His attempts at adding attacking flair, such as El Hadji Diouf, were an unmitigated disaster.

Jamie Carragher could see it all coming: “I arrived for pre-season training [in 2002] anticipating my first view of the players who’d turn us into title winners,” he wrote in his autobiography Carra.

“I returned home the same evening in a state of depression.”

Houllier left in 2004 after Liverpool had failed to win their longed-for Premier League title.

Don Revie’s Leeds

The ultimate team of pantomime villains and arguably the closest equivalent to Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal.

Widely-despised tactics? Check. Talented players who weren’t trusted to fully express themselves? Check. A manager riddled with neurosis? Full house.

Leeds did plenty under Revie, but there remains a feeling they would’ve won more without some of their more self-defeating methods.

Revie did once say that “the manner in which success is achieved must be considered”, but the ethos at Elland Road was much more brutal than it was beautiful.

Porto (2004)

Celtic fans had warned us about Jose Mourinho’s Porto. Mourinho’s team had beaten Celtic in the 2003 UEFA Cup final with a masterclass of gamesmanship.

But nobody expected the Portuguese champions to follow that by winning the *actual* Champions League.

A team of Deco, Maniche, Costinha, Ricardo Carvalho and Vitor Baia weren’t a Pastel de nata Stoke, but they were a darkly skilful team. With an emphasis on ‘darkly’.

George Graham’s Arsenal

‘Boring, Boring Arsenal’ was the cry as George Graham’s team bored their way to league titles in 1989 and 1991.

While the former is chiefly remembered for *that* Michael Thomas winner at Anfield, the Gunners’ commitment to their infamous offside trap and binary scorelines was something else.

Parma were flummoxed in the 1994 Cup Winners’ Cup final, completely incapable of computing how a team with so little attacking intent got the better of them.

The nation united in glee 12 months later, after Nayim lobbed David Seaman from the halfway line. A real wondergoal your nan could’ve scored.

Wimbledon (1988)

Setting fire to one another’s clothes, blocking the toilets in the visitors’ dressing room, knocking seven shades of sh*t out of each other… the Crazy Gang sounded like the worst school trip of your life.

“A lot of the boys had personal issues which manifested itself in the ways they behaved and performed on the pitch,” manager Bobby Gauld explained in 1988. No kidding.

Allied to an agricultural long-ball playing style won Wimbledon few neutral supporters, but they didn’t give a solitary eff when the unfashionable Londoners beat Liverpool in the FA Cup final.