If we’re being quite honest, this long and much anticipated summer of international soccer was a disappointment. You might feel differently if your country won something or if your favored team did better than expected. But on the whole, the soccer wasn’t great. And neither was the entertainment.

Chile won the Copa America Centenario on penalties, repeating its title from the regular edition of that event just the summer prior, and Portugal hoisted its first ever major title at the European Championships in France.

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The biggest stateside men’s tournament since the 1994 World Cup was a joyous celebration of soccer. The tickets were unaffordable to many, but the games had a good atmosphere nonetheless and the pre- and post-game tailgates in the parking lots felt like ongoing parties.

The Euro was initially beset by problems: an ugly comeback of hooliganism, stadium security issues, terrorism fears, strikes that snarled up the country. Some engaging storylines redeemed it, like the improbable run by Iceland, the unlikely Welsh semifinalists, the French push to the finals, Cristiano Ronaldo’s quest for an international trophy.

But if you turned on your TV for the quality soccer, you walked away feeling shortchanged. And that was largely true for the Copa as well. Half the teams that should have made up the quartet of favorites barely showed up. Brazil clearly prioritized the Olympics by leaving Neymar at home and, in manager Dunga’s final days in charge, gave a bumbling performance, further decaying the program’s glittering reputation as they failed to reach the quarterfinals.

Uruguay was eliminated just two games into the group stage and looked pedestrian without the injured Luis Suarez and fellow forward Edinson Cavani still miles removed from his best form. Local favorite Mexico was embarrassed 7-0 by Chile in its first knockout game. And the home team USA, while improved in the context of its own limp form of the last few years, was battered 4-0 by Argentina in the semis.

A Chile-Argentina rematch in the final was ruined by an overzealous referee, and the most interesting thing to emerge from the whole thing was Lionel Messi’s announcement that he’d retire from international soccer immediately after his side lost in a penalty shootout. If the tournament as a whole was a success, the soccer was largely forgettable.

At the Euro, it was worse than that. The play was lamentable. The majority of games were uneventful, boring or altogether unwatchable. The 2.12 goals-per-game average was the lowest since Euro ’96. Expected contenders like Spain, Germany and Belgium disappointed while defensive specialists such as Italy and Portugal thrived. Upstart teams like Wales and Iceland, both at their first Euros ever, did well on their own account, but also because the overall quality of the tournament was lacking. Few star players showed up at their best – Ronaldo included. And the whole thing was a sorry version of what this Euro could have been.

In the end, it was won by a team that simply managed not to lose. It didn’t matter much that Portugal won just one of its seven games in regulation. The Portuguese also didn’t lose any. That was enough to become champions of Europe. They drew all three of their group games and clawed out sufficient goals to ride their defense to the trophy.

Draw a parallel between these tournaments, a unifier in all this substandard summer soccer, and you eventually arrive at overexpansion.

The Copa America Centenario will likely prove a benefit to American soccer as it further prepares the land for another World Cup on our soil. But it existed because it promised more cash than the two troubled confederations of the Americas could pass up on. So even though Copa America is supposed to be a quadrennial thing, another one was invented as an excuse to capitalize on the 100th anniversary of the tournament’s first edition.

The Euro, meanwhile, grew from 16 teams to 24. There proved to be enough solid national teams on the Old Continent to inflate the event by 50 percent without it devolving into competitive farce. And the upside to the development of the game in countries that don’t often get to compete in tournaments like these could be substantial. But by funneling a full 16 of the group-stage entrants into the also-expanded knockout stages, the first round lacked any real urgency. In the old format, Portugal wouldn’t have made the quarterfinal on the strength of results in its first three games.

With every summer now packed with one major soccer event or another, soccer has become continuous. The European club seasons back up to the international tournaments, which are bookended by the preseason to-do’s that seek to further monetize the game’s unrelenting popularity and capacity for generating revenue streams.

This accomplishes two things – or rather, inflicts two harmful effects on the game: It saturates us with viewing options, making it harder for a game to entertain us. And it exhausts the players who are worth watching. Whereas they once played 40 or so competitive games in a year, that number is now pushing towards 60, or in some cases even 70. They still only have one pair of legs but are expected to perform far more often than their superstar predecessors, in a game that only ever seems to get quicker and more physical.

Perhaps this summer doesn’t prove to be a trend – although the 2015 Copa America and the 2014 World Cup didn’t dazzle either – and soccer hasn’t overextended itself into a malaise among the international tournaments, devouring the game’s competitiveness with more competition. Maybe it’s all just a fluke.

But it seems that if there’s any solution to this problem, if it does persist, it’s contraction. Fewer tournaments, with fewer teams.

That would hurt, considering that it probably means saying no to money in a sport that’s grown hopelessly addicted to it. But cutting the Euro back to 16 teams, where it made a tight and tense tournament that was unbroken and in no need at all of fixing, would address a lot of issues. So would refusing to expand the World Cup from 32 to 40 teams, as new FIFA president Gianni Infantino promised during his election campaign. For that matter, plenty of other competitions – more on the continental club side – could do with an unapologetic paring down.

It’s unlikely to happen, though. Soccer has demonstrated repeatedly in recent years that it’s capable of acting in its own self-interest. And it’s become too lucrative to too many to suddenly become protective of the integrity of its product.

But in a consuming sport such as soccer, less is more.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer columnist for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.