The Athletic redefine player roles

One of the great quotes in football was when Bob Paisley was asked after a match about a player being offside but not interfering with play. Bob said " He shouldn't be on the pitch if he's not interfering with play."
 
lg1991 said:
I mean, surely makes more sense than just saying "Defender", or "Midfielder".

Despite what the dinosaurs in the stands might say, Football has changed since the 90s.
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What was wrong with this?

formation_235_numbers.png
 
lg1991 said:
I mean, surely makes more sense than just saying "Defender", or "Midfielder".

Despite what the dinosaurs in the stands might say, Football has changed since the 90s.
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It's just a bit too narrow and specific and a bit of a solution in search of a problem. We've had terms like 'water carrier', 'playmaker', 'trequartista' or even basics like 'target man', 'box-to-box midfielder' or penalty box striker so terms to describe typical characteristics of players isn't new. But what's the difference between a target and a roamer in terms of the qualities needed to play the role? Or between a roamer and an outlet? Or between a target and an outlet?

Is it easier to say that a given game turned in our favour when we moved Lundstram from distributor to creator or is it easier to say that moving Lundstram up the field helped us gain a foothold?

We all have ways to express these ideas as it is, there's no need for this silly wheel of confusion.
 
Shit like this reminds me of the look on Sir Walter’s face when Neil McCann mentioned the ’inverted winger’ :))
 
Nothing really new there, just some new ways to describe different types of players we all know. Some of these are a bit too narrow - what's really the difference between a 'creator' and an 'orchestrator' - but it's not really rethinking anything.

A finisher - your classic lead the line striker
A roamer - your false 9/deep-lying forward with good off-the-ball movement
Box-crasher (lol) - arrives late in the box, greater attacking threat
Builder and distributor - variants of your deeper-lying playmakers, presumably different depending on their defensive qualities

etc.

It's not radical or anything.
 
Dio said:
One of the great quotes in football was when Bob Paisley was asked after a match about a player being offside but not interfering with play. Bob said " He shouldn't be on the pitch if he's not interfering with play."
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Great quote or someone (a great manager) struggling to adapt to a simple rule change?
 
Somemightsay said:
These are the types of things football clubs have been using for years. When Liverpool are looking for a certain type of player they don't just filter by 'Attacker', they'll have them categorised in a similar sort of way to this.

It makes sense - someone like Wan Bissaka is a totally different type of full back to a Trent.
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Yep…one is pish.

The other isn’t
 
Hap Hapablap said:
Football has changed plenty of times over the last 170 years or whatever. The Dutch changed it then more recently the Spanish to what we are seeing now.

Who is to say it won't go back to something like this? It would take a brave club and coach to do it but you never know.
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I’ll say it. The game and players are too fast now and you’d constantly get caught on the break
 
Fine.

Before the author wasted all that effort on how and what, he'd have been better to ask "Why?"

It's like bad marketing think. If I change the label everyone will be so wowed they won't care it's the same old shit
 
Dynamo said:
I’ll say it. The game and players are too fast now and you’d constantly get caught on the break
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The full backs playing the deepest makes sense as there are usually the quicker defenders.

The 3 centre Half's playing basically as deep midfielders would see them over ran.

Teams still play similarly when chasing the game, ie modern formations fail so revert to 100 year old formations
 
ChesterBear72 said:
Americans
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This is not an American thing, this is an analytics thing. This is happening all over the world as anyone who works in a corporate job can attest to.

For me, this makes sense to apply additional metadata to players. Allow me to explain, if you are looking to compare stats on players you want to purchase, it would make sense that the correct stats were used, if all midfielders were called midfielders, a computer would attempt to compare Kante and De Bruyne the same way, however if you assigned a midfielder “type” to each, it would allow you compare De Bruyne only to similar midfielders to him.

Remember, computers do everything these days, scouts are being replaced by data analysts. The more metadata you apply to players, the better the computer will perform.

Do I think the names they used are wanky, yes, do I see value in what they are doing, also yes.
 
What an absolute load of specky Virgin pish.

Fucking Fifa Generation nonsense.

Just call the players what they are. They can’t just define 18 different styles on player based on a few players based in Europe. Wide defender? Pish.

Why do people do desperately want change when change isn’t necessarily the best thing?

In the bin with this utter pish.
 
BostonBear1983 said:
This is not an American thing, this is an analytics thing. This is happening all over the world as anyone who works in a corporate job can attest to.

For me, this makes sense to apply additional metadata to players. Allow me to explain, if you are looking to compare stats on players you want to purchase, it would make sense that the correct stats were used, if all midfielders were called midfielders, a computer would attempt to compare Kante and De Bruyne the same way, however if you assigned a midfielder “type” to each, it would allow you compare De Bruyne only to similar midfielders to him.

Remember, computers do everything these days, scouts are being replaced by data analysts. The more metadata you apply to players, the better the computer will perform.

Do I think the names they used are wanky, yes, do I see value in what they are doing, also yes.
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Yawn. I'm an analyst mate so I don't really want to hear your patronising "Allow me to explain" bollocks on a football forum. It's a simple game made into nonsense.

"Science is knowledge we understand so well that we can teach it to a computer".

Everything else is art.

Football is art mate.
 
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