Quote Originally Posted by MFauli View Post
Why can't modern sports anime leave all the derivative personal drama out of the story and focus on THE SPORTS?! That's why Tsubasa is still the best football anime, because it's just kids trying their hardest to win their football matches and that's enough. And it's super exciting and fun to watch.
Because sports series are fujoshi bait, and often written by fujoshi. The genre is a magnet for it. The alternative are dry "love letters" to a sport written by old men.

It's hard to write actually engaging sports series that don't have some other element to them. The majority of the critically acclaimed ones are either Adachi works or from the early 1990s before fujoshi took over the whole genre.