| The Question:
by Jonathan Wilson
Eight decades on, and it's all rather more complicated, and not just because not all goalkeepers these days are entirely socially dysfunctional. Wingers disappeared for a while, and became a luxury item, almost a museum piece, and now they're back, all over the place, and the tendency is for them to play on the opposite flank. There have always been a handful who did that. Tom Finney for instance, played as a right-footed left-wing in the greatest English forward line there has ever been — along with Stanley Matthews, Stan M.ortensen, Tommy Lawton and Will Mannion — but that was only because Matthews was already installed in his preferred position. Later, players such as Dennis Tueart, Chris Waddle, Marc Overmars and Robert Pires, operating on the opposite side through preference, were highly effective coming in on to their stronger foot. But now these inside-out wingers are everywhere. At Barcelona, Leo Messi is proving himself probably the greatest individual talent since Diego Maradona, cutting in from the right on to his stronger left foot. Arjen Robben has resurrected Bayern Munich's season doing much the same. Cristiano Ronaldo is right- footed and plays on the right, but is so strong with his left that he, too, is constantly shifting inside, looking for shooting opportunities. It's the same in England. Ashley Young is a right-footed left-winger. Adam Johnson is left-footed, but has made an impact at Manchester City on the right, and Craig Bellamy, a right-footer on the left, has arguably been their best player this season. Niko Kranjcar plays on the left, but drifts infield on to his right. Damien Duff spent most of his career on the left but has prospered on the right for Fulham. At Wigan, the left-footed Charles N'Zogbia is having a decent season on the right. Steed Malbranque has been a revelation in recent weeks on the left for Sunderland. At the national level, Steven Gerrard has become the preferred choice on the left of the attacking midfield trident Fabio Capello opts for in a 4-2-3-1. So why is the tactic so effective, and why has it suddenly become so widespread? The death of the traditional winger Chapman's Arsenal team, which completed a hat-trick of championships, was thoroughly modern in the sense of having wingers who regularly drifted infield, making the most of the long, accurate passing of the inside-forward Alex James. Yet for all their success, the image of the winger, isolated, bandy-legged, sashaying his way past the hurly-burly of English midfields, or the fact that. from autumn onward the only firm ground was to be found out wide, meant flair was necessarily pushed to the flanks. Perhaps it was simply nostalgia. In the year immediately following World War II, there was a great flowering of the English winger with Matthews, Finney Len Shackleton, Bobby Langton, Jimmy Mullen, George Robb, Johnny Hancocks and Charles Mitten. The problem was that they emerged just as the collectivist soccer of the Communist bloc was demonstrating the "outmodedness" of the English focus on the individual. Mikhail Yakushin, the manager of the 1945 Dynamo Moscow team, for instance, was , scornful of Matthews. "The principle of collective play is the guiding one in Soviet soccer," he said. "A player must not only be good in general, he must be good for the particular team. His individual qualities are high, but we put collective soccer first and individual soccer second, so we do not favor his style as we think teamwork would suffer." It took the 6-3 mauling at home to Hungary in 1953 to bring that message — six months after what many saw as the apogee of wing-play Matthew's performance in the 1953 FA Cup Final. What really did it for the old-school winger, though, was the shift from the three at the back of the W-M to a back four, a process that began in Hungary, the Soviet Union and Brazil in the 1950s and was universalized after Brazil's successes in the 1958 and 1962 World Cups. The back three of the W-M operated on a pivot; the ideal for attacking teams was to switch play rapidly from one flank to the other, "turning" the defense and providing space for the winger so he could be traveling at speed by the time he reached the fullback. Add an extra defender, and that acceleration room simply isn't there any more. It was that realization that led Alf Ramsey and Viktor Maslov to develop the 4-4-2 (or, more accurately in both cases, the 4-1-3-2) in the mid-1960s. As their ideas took hold, the winger became a wide midfielder, a "shunter," somebody who might be expected to cross a ball but was also meant to put in a defensive shift. The lopsided 4-3-3s of the 1970s could still accommodate something approximating a winger, but by the 1980s they had become increasingly rare, evolved out of existence by the dominance of 4-4-2 and 3-5-2, which Johan Cruyff described as "the death of football'. precisely because it militated against wing-play. The reinvention of the winger With a lone center-forward, of course, there is a need for the advanced midfielders to provide goals (and conversely it may be that many of the players now operating as wide forwards would in a previous age have been second strikers), particularly if that forward operates as a false nine, so that perhaps, to an extent, explains the modern directness. But it also seems hard to explain the idea that the most lethal cross was a ball dragged back from the goal-line. It can be dangerous of course, raising doubt in a goalkeeper's mind as to whether he should come to claim or not, but there seems no reason why it should be more threatening than in-swinger delivered at pace. In fact, intuitively, it would seem a ball whipped toward the far post that requires just a touch to divert it in or that will sneak in if no one touches it is more dangerous. It also feels as though that sort of goal has become more common over the past decade or so. That may itself be a result of an increasing number of inside-out wingers, or it may be a result of the increased spin that can be imparted on modern balls, or even perhaps of the liberalization of the offside rule which forces teams to defend deeper- an in-swinger curving into the far post is obviously more dangerous if players are running into it six yards out than 15 yards out, both in terms of angle and the time a goalkeeper would have to react to a touch. There are other advantages to a wide playercoming inside. For one thing, given that most defenders still play on the traditional team, a winger attacking him on the inside is attacking his weaker foot. For another, a wide player drifting inside is opening space for an overlapping fullback, of whom there are an increasing number. The link-up of Fires and Ashley Cole at Arsenal was an early example of that; more recent examples include Ivan Rakitic and Danijel Pranjic for Croatia, Gerrard and Cole for England and, most obviously Messi and Dani Alves for Barcelona. The two types of inside-out winger That certainly has been the role occupied by Krancjar and Luka M.odric at Spurs; in their case, the flank becomes an area where a playmaker can still be accommodated in the English game. Others, though, such as Ronaldo and Bellamy are more obviously forwards, who just happen to start wide. Wayne Rooney'saerial ability perhaps means the center forward is his best position, but previous seasons have suggested that he, too, could occupy that role. And, in between, both playmaker and forward, is Messi, a genius for all the ages. It is hard to believe any player starting wide has had such an impact on games so regularly since Matthews (and even then you wonder whether British pundits, conditioned to see greatness in wingers, weren't seeing what they wanted to see). Wide forwards can be stopped, but it takes a major change for the defending team. Alvaro Arbeloa's marking job on Messi for Liverpool in 2007 shows how effective it can be switching a right-footed defender to play on the left Hank, and Young's slightly stuttering form for Aston Villa earlier this season shows what can happen when defenders get used to showing a player outside rather then inside. But then a player of the class of Ronaldo or Messi (as he is today) will simply go outside (could that, in fact, be why Barcalon.a bought Zlatan Ibrahimovic, to give them an aerial presence if 1VIessi were forced into crossing more often?), and playing a right-looter at left back or a left-footer at right back immediately impairs their capacity to overlap. So, the wide forward is hard to combat, scores goals, can operate as a playmaker and creates space for attacking defenders. All he doesn't do is get to the end line and curling crosses into the penalty area. He seems such a potent threat that the real puzzle is why he didn't emerge earlier.
|
Why are so many wingers playing on the “wrong” wings?
