The extinction of number 9 and the new striker model How many naturally talented forwards can you think of right now? Surely not many. Falcao, HiguaÃn, Fernando Llorente, Soldado, Cavani, Luis Suárez… Few more. The fact is that modern football is going through what could be considered the extinction of ‘number 9’. The large teams in the European landscape have gotten used to playing without it. And the model works to a large extent, as Barcelona or the Spanish national team have shown. The game strategies are increasingly removing forwards: football has gone from being played along the sidelines to being fought in the centre –a funnel that wreaks havoc on the finishers’ best virtues. How many header shots do you remember from the last few years? Yes, evidently Falcao or Cristiano Ronaldo (there are no words to describe his goal against United), but there is not much more to remember. The teams tend now to fill up with defenders in the centre or the sidelines. A clear example is Chelsea, which has gone from having a striker like Drogba to playing with Mata, Hazard, Oscar and Lampard. Strikers? Only Torres. A deficit that they have sought to fix last winter with Demba Ba’s signing. Something similar has happened in Real Madrid in certain occasions. The team is like a pack of wolves when they go out to counterattack, but they cannot find solutions for closed defence. The reason is that their two sideline players always try the diagonal line to the centre and number 9 cannot find balls to finish (whether it is HuguaÃn or Benzema). Barcelona, saving distances, also has the same problem at times, although in this case they have someone to get them ‘unstuck’: Messi. The only great great European team that has two pure number nines are Munich’s Bayern, with Mario Gómez and Mandzukic. Nevertheless, it seems impossible to paly with both at the same time. The classical 4-4-2 formation has been slowly transformed in the fields of game into the 4-2-3 or 4-3-3 variants. There are few coaches that dare bring both forwards to the front. Sir Alex Ferguson does bet for Van Persie and Rooney in his team, but sacrificing the latter, right now a team member of the Duth player (in the Champions match against Madrid he even played as defending midfielder). In every team, the experts say, it is key to have a goalkeeper and a number nine. Casillas’ Real Madrid and Ronaldo with the ‘galácticos’ was the latest example. But now the story is very different. The goalkeeper is still eky, but the ‘false nine’ is more important. Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi or Van Persie could adapt to that role. They are finishers that need to break out from several metres away to obtain best results. You only need to see from where Messi or Cristiano are taking off in many occasions. The Argentinean makes it back to the midfield, while the Portuguese does so many times from his own area (goals against Celta or Sevilla) to go through the entire field in less than eleven seconds. The same thing with Van Persie, who scores most of his goals showing up from behind. Definitely, they never are there, but they make it. That is what the new forward looks like.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Jul 2013 08:29:09 +0000
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