The False Nine



The front pairing may have made a comeback in 2013, but the false nine has become enough of a feature that it's barely even remarked upon any more. Lionel Messi, of course, remains the master, dropping deep and pulling wide to link the play and disrupt opponents' marking structures at Barcelona and it says much for the difficulty of achieving the mutual understanding necessary to make the system work that with the Argentina national team he almost invariably now plays to the right, with Gonzalo Higuaín a much more orthodox number nine.

In Messi's absence, Neymar played one league game as a false nine before being restored to the left flank, and Cesc Fábregas – who did the job for Spain at the Euros – played there in the subsequent three games. Fábregas's interpretation of the role is very different to that of Messi: he seems far less a forward who drops deep than a midfielder who happens to be playing further forward. He doesn't create with the darts and gambetas of Messi, but operates almost as a target man, just one who lays the ball off having received it on the ground rather than from a long high pass or cross.

Chile offer another variant, although that could change if Humberto Suazo returns to the side. For most of the World Cup qualifying they played with Alexis Sánchez to the right and Eduardo Vargas to the left both looking to swoop into the space where an orthodox nine would have been. Jorge Valdívia or Matias Fernández then played effectively as an orthodox ten, leaving less a false nine than no nine at all.

Other attempts to play without a centre-forward have produced mixed results. West Ham's experiment with Kevin Nolan – more towards the Fábregas end of the spectrum than the Messi, although not especially reminiscent of either – seemed to terrify Spurs but nobody else. Adel Taarabt, though, excelled in the role for Fulham against Manchester City, although he played far more like a traditional centre-forward than seemed probable: a false false nine perhaps.

Inversions

A natural consequence of the false nine is the emergence of the inverted winger, another figure who is now firmly established in the positional taxonomy. So accepted is it, indeed, that this year a word was created for the position by the Linguistics and Literary Studies Section of the Hungarian Academy of Science: "tükörszélső". The idea of a left-footer playing on the right and vice-versa seems completely normal, so much so that a generation of players is emerging that naturally play on what would once have been considered the "wrong" side. Andros Townsend, for instance, is left-footed, but seems far more assured playing on the right.

There is also a sub-category of inverted wingers who aren't really wingers at all, but forwards who happen to play wide, looking to work the diagonal inside the full-back. Cristiano Ronaldo, although essentially sui generis, probably falls into that category, as does Neymar and, if Gareth Bale continues to play in the right, he will too (Sánchez and Vargas offer an example of two such players functioning almost as a very distant strike partnership).

When Wayne Rooney played wide for Manchester United in a 4-3-3, Sir Alex Ferguson would talk about how easy it was for him to find space.

After all, he has only to drop a little to find himself in the natural hole in a 4-2-3-1, between full-back and winger and to the side of the two holders (think how Robinho prospered in that pocket for Brazil against the Netherlands in the first half of the World Cup quarter-final in 2010), or, cutting inside onto his stronger foot, he is attacking the full-back on his weaker side.

The best way of combating that might be to play the full-back inverted as well. Rafa Benítez pioneered that at Liverpool when they beat Barcelona in 2007 by deploying Álvaro Arbeloa on the left against Messi, when he still played on the right, but there are suggestions it might be becoming more common. Phil Bardsley and César Azpilicueta, for instance, have regularly played on the left this season despite being right-footed. Gaël Clichy, meanwhile, continues to confound all explanation, by being right-footed but always playing on the left, and then looking like a fish out of water when asked to play at right-back for Manchester City against Fulham. The drawback of an inverted full-back comes in the attacking sphere: it's very hard for a right-footed player to overlap on the left and vice versa, and that means that, unless the approach is overtly defensive, an inverted full-back can't realistically be played on the same flank as an inverted winger if a team is to retain attacking width.

The Back Three

The back three initially died away in the late fifties and early sixties when it became apparent that a back four was both better at combatting opposing wingers, guarding against a defence being turned, and offered an additional attacking threat with full-backs pushing forwards. It came back in the eighties as teams stopped attacking with wingers, the three central defenders offering two markers and a spare man against opponents playing with a strike pairing, but faded away again as single central striker systems became more common, leaving the team playing a back three with one marker and two spare men.

And now it has risen again, although in a multiplicity of forms. In Italy, where wingers remain as scarce as they have ever been and so the full-backs only occasionally have a direct opponent to stifle, wing-backs offer a means of introducing a measure of attacking width without taking a player out of the centre, where the familiar packed tactical battle goes on.

Or teams can embrace the defensiveness of the system, the extra security offered by the additional spare man. Hull City have been particularly successful playing with a back three when they feel little onus to attack, and Aston Villa have also used it in that way this season.

And there is the third model, the one drawn from the basic tenets of Total Football: play one more central defender than the opponent plays central strikers, using the spare man as a libero ready to step into midfield. Put crudely, that allows a side to get more men higher up the pitch quickly, and so facilitates the pressing and ball-winning so central to that style of play. On occasions, a side gets so used to playing with a back three, is so comfortable with its transitions, that it prefers to use a back three even against a lone striker, relishing the flexibility offered by having two spare men at the back; although that does make it essential that a team has central defenders who are comfortable on the ball.