The early and mid 2000s had sooo many amazing players and teams . Such a marvelous time

Without a doubt 1990 - 2005 was the golden age for the sport

The downsides of social media and var have more to do with the quality of players and referees than with the fans or the rules imo. I don’t think social media and var make the game worse or less exciting. But it definitely changed football and added new dimensions to the sport as you say. Everything else apart from the first parts of the video, I think are spot on. The quality and passion of today’s players, for whatever reason, are not worth the upward valuations of the transfer market. Players of high quality with character and grit have disappeared immensely. Even at the top of the game. It’s crazy that players like ronaldo, ibra, and messi, could still outsmart and outplay youngsters as consistently as they’ve done. New generations have been scouted and prepared terribly. There was so much to look forward to in yesterdays players and much less nowadays. New players have improved physically but lost a lot of mentality. I blame more the scouts, the coaches, the federations, and culture than the players themselves but the decline in intelligent team based decision making has been so apparent. I miss players and fans who cared about the team instead of stats and recruitment optics.

95/96 to 02/03 my personal favourite era

Ronaldo nazario, Ronaldinho, and Zidane are my 3 favorite players ever. So My Favorite era is from 1996-2006.

You make some great points but also some historical revisionism. For example, it is wrong to say players didn't have to deal with angry fans and media. Sure social media wasn't a thing but television reached most people and angry fans would insult players to their faces. It's also not true that players didnt care how many goals or assists they had and that they just wanted to win. In every single era, there are certain players who care more about their stats than wins. Now maybe the extent of how many players are like that has changed, but with the way you phrase it, it's as if all players during that era didn't care about their stats

i think a lot of sports best eras happened to be in the nineties/early 2000s, football, nba, snooker(sttill the 90s players dominating today), tennis.. and probably many sports i cant think to mention or just didnt watch at that time

modern football is shite. mid 90s to early 2000s was the greatest era of football that saw the greatest and most diverse types of players ever