It is 125 years since the first false nine and its history since is fascinating as much for its failure to become a dominant tactic as for its many successful applications

At times it feels in football there is nothing new, merely the reinvocation of old ideas. It is well over 100 years since GO Smith started operating for the Corinthians as what we would now term a false nine and yet still the idea of a team operating without a fixed focal point in the centre of their attack can cause chaos. It is 63 years since the England centre-half Harry Johnston spoke of the sense of “utter helplessness” he felt in facing the deep-lying Nándor Hidegkuti as England lost 6-3 to Hungary at Wembley. And yet, as Jesse Lingard proved recently for Manchester United against Tottenham, the false nine, used well, still has the capacity to take opponents by surprise.

What is striking about the use of the false nine over time is that it has never taken root. Nobody in England copied Smith. There was a period in the 1920s in Argentina when the centre-forward as “conductor” became popular but that style of play, with a V-shaped five-man forward line, was in effect obliterated by the emergence of Bernabé Ferreyra, a brilliant centre-forward of monstrous proportions.

2018 in football tactics: France and Real Madrid did it their way | Jonathan Wilson Read more

Perhaps Matthias Sindelar would have had followers in Austria had it not been for the second world war but even at the time his talents seemed to be regarded as unique. The deep-lying centre-forward used by Hungary in the early fifties was essentially the brainchild of Marton Bukovi. He developed the style in Zagreb during the war before finding at MTK on his return to Budapest not one but two players ideally suited to the role, Hidegkuti and Peter Palotas. As the national team took on the approach it gained popularitybut even there the false nine never became a defining style and, by the sixties, by which time the culture that had generated the tactical radicalism had been devastated by the Uprising and its aftermath, the image of the Hungarian striker was the far more orthodox Florian Albert.

Other incarnations have followed a similar pattern: Alfrédo di Stéfano, Johan Cruyff, Lionel Messi, Francesco Totti, Cristiano Ronaldo (at times at Manchester United, before he bulked up and transformed himself into a more traditional number nine) … they’ve all either played as a false nine for only part of their career, or have been a one-off and have turned out, in that role, to be irreplaceable.

There have been four notable examples of the false nine in the Premier League this season. Roberto Firmino has proved particularly adept in the role, dropping deep, creating space for the pace of Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mané. But even Liverpool, whose success in the latter part of last season was so predicated on their front three, have changed. Often this season Salah has played more centrally with Firmino dropping off into a more traditional number 10 role in a 4-2-3-1, something that gets an additional creative player on to the pitch and shifts Salah slightly nearer goal.

At Chelsea Eden Hazard has been a reluctant false nine. When used like that against Barcelona last season, it was a specific tactic designed to take advantage of Chelsea’s superior pace on the break. This season, though, it feels like a stopgap while Maurizio Sarri waits for the club to provide him with a central striker who does not rely on getting crosses into the box.

The Fiver: sign up and get our daily football email.

Raheem Sterling was used by Manchester City as a false nine at Chelsea, in part because of Sergio Agüero’s injury problems but also to direct his pace at the heart of the Chelsea defence (as England had used him at times in advance of Harry Kane at the World Cup). In that sense, though, he is arguably part of a slightly different trend, less a false nine than a wide player noted for his speed being used centrally – something Louis van Gaal did with Arjen Robben with the Netherlands and Mauricio Pochettino has done with Lucas Moura.

And then there was Lingard. Again, he is perhaps not an orthodox false nine, if such a thing can be said to exist. He did not drop deep, dragging the central defenders out of position. Rather he played at the tip of a midfield diamond but with the two central forwards pulling wide to attack the space behind the full-backs so there was often space for him to accelerate into.

So this is where the false nine finds itself after 125 years of history. It is a role that demands perhaps too unusual a skill-set ever to become a dominant mode – and that anyway is probably the preserve of high-class sides for whom having a target for their clearance is less of a concern – and so, familiar as it now is, it tends to be used only in very specific circumstances.

It has mutated to take on numerous forms – centre-forward dropping off, winger playing centrally, attacking midfielder pushing forward, the sort of advanced passing hub that Cesc Fàbregas represented briefly for Spain – but without a genius to operate as a roving centre-forward, around whom a team is in effect built, the false nine has become a shock tactic. It has proved very difficult to implement over any protracted period but it remains a highly effective way of unsettling an opponent.