**TL;DR** — **Club football sees the world’s best players perform to their highest standard.** When watching the current European championships, the matches can undeniably be enjoyable. Indeed, it would be doing the players a disservice to say that the standard of football is poor. However, international football just cannot be expected to reach the same level as club football because the players do not play together enough. Take possibly the greatest current player Lionel Messi, whose goal scoring record for Barcelona is phenomenal with 474 goals in 520 games. It is hard to put how amazing this is into words. Messi’s numbers for Argentina however are (for his standard) less impressive, with 73 goals in 145 games. This means that Messi averages close to a goal every game for Barcelona and half a goal per game for Argentina. Of course the goals per game ratio for Argentina is still excellent, but it pales in comparison to the Barcelona numbers. The simple explanation for this is that Messi spends almost every week training with his club teammates, thus creating superior chemistry. This simply cannot be replicated during international breaks or international tournaments. Likewise, the quality of players around Messi for Argentina is lesser when compared to Barcelona’s collection of superstars. To that end, international football suffers from a wider talent disparity and a struggle to create the same level of team chemistry as you might find with club teams.