Madcap score lines have brought the poor standard of defending in the Premier League sharply into focus. Perhaps the fact that the ‘modern attacking fullback’ apparently no longer has the skills to defend is a major part of the problem
You certainly can’t accuse this season’s Premier League campaign as being boring now can you? 8-2’s, 6-1’s, 5-3’s, football sides have been partying like it’s 1923 with the goals for and against columns quaking under a veritable avalanche of goals. There has been some great attacking play, but the glut of goals being scored since August has inevitably prompted debate over the strength of the defending in the league. Indeed James Platt of this Parish highlighted this in his excellent piece on Monday about the spectacle and the entertainment versus bemoaning poor defences and hopeless marking. From this particular fan’s standpoint one of the most glaring issues affecting the standard of defending is the general deficiencies in the full back positions.
Over the past two decades, full backs have become increasingly more adventurous, asked to work the whole side of the pitch, from penalty area to penalty area. They have shifted in many teams to become auxiliary wingers, asked as much to attack as they are to defend. It’s this evolution in tactics that has perhaps led to the situation where fullbacks themselves, because of the roles they are asked to play and because of the attributes that the position is now deemed to require that they widely appear to have lost the ability to do the defensive basics; positioning, marking, tackling etc.
Frequently in today’s game you hear the phrases “going forward he’s really talented” or “he likes to bomb on”. Fullback attributes today are often linked to the ability to a) run very fast b) be able to cross the ball and c) have the touch and the skills to be able to beat a man. If they are able to finish tidily (or in fact as the usual cliché goes ‘explosively’) then that’s a definite tick in the box. Being able to get forward and be an attacker is often now the skill that his highlighted, rather than say, the ability to cover their centre back and ensure an offside trap is executed well. It all means that many fullbacks basically are no longer required to be able to know how to defend. Which is just as well really, when a significant number playing today have no idea how to.
This was emphasised to me at the weekend during the Chelsea vs. Arsenal game. In this match, in which 8 goals were scored and countless more could, and perhaps should have been scored, the level of defending (and indeed goalkeeping in Petr Cech’s case) was laughable. In particular though, we saw the abilities (or lack thereof) of the modern fullback painfully and brutally exposed. We will perhaps give Johan Djorou somewhat of a pass as he is by trade a centre back but really, his dreadful positional awareness goes a long way to showing why he is yet to become a regular at the club, but for Jose Bosingwa and Andre Santos there can be no excuse.
On Saturday, both gave pitiful defensive displays. Quite what Bosingwa (thought of very highly as an ‘attacking fullback) is doing on some of the Arsenal goals is beyond me. Lazily strolling so far inside the pitch that you could get an aircraft carrier through the gap he was leaving just one of many instances of his apparent lack of defensive know how. Obviously he might have been asked to play this way by his manager (and managers before him, or indeed throughout his career) but then if that’s true, and surely no manager with a sane mind could ask him to play like that, then it raises the key issue of whether ‘being a fullback’ still carries with it the requirement of having a qualification of ‘knowing how to defend’.
The case of Andre Santos effectively captures the whole issue in one neat, if slightly out of shape package. Never mind the fact that Santos appears like one of those Sunday League players who has some technique and skill and this allows him to wander around and do pretty much what he likes because he can strike the odd good ball, Santos is a walking caricature of the Brazilian fullback which by extension is the model that the ‘modern fullback is built on.
On Saturday, Santos’ defending (a loose term) was frankly laughable. The terms ‘touch tight’, ‘track your man’ and ‘hold a good line’ didn’t appear to be in his vocabulary as along with his team mates, playing suicidaly high looked to be more his style. Indeed, I’m sure some out there thought he had a good game given that he scored, although that conveniently ignores the fact that his primary function on the pitch is to defend. Indeed given the first goal came from a cross where he gave Juan Mata an open invitation to put the ball in the box that effectively cancels out any credit from his goal.
In a way, Santos can be forgiven for being a product of his environment. The whole concept of the ‘attacking fullback’ has largely come from Brazil, where the left and right backs are given completely free licence to attack. They are wingers in all but name, charging up and down the flank. Being able to shoot seems more valued than being able to track back. Roberto Carlos and Cafu seemed to inspire a generation into thinking that the life of a full back was all about scoring goals and step over’s however those two still knew the basics, knew how to defend properly and then combine it with the attacking side of the game.
As that is not to say that fullbacks shouldn’t ever get forward. That position is no longer just for a clogger with no technique and in many systems these players can provide valuable width and invention. However they still need to be able to, at the most basic level, be able to read and understand the game well enough to support their centre backs. The contrast in the Chelsea Arsenal game between Messer’s Santos and Bosingwa and then Ashley Cole could not be more marked. While he didn’t have his best game, Cole displays how the modern fullback role should be played. Highly effective going forward and overlapping, providing his side with extra attacking options...yet also able to track, mark and tackle. Obviously not everyone has the ability level of Cole however it’s the fact that so many fullbacks in today’s game completely neglect their defensive responsibilities that’s the issue.
Within the Brazilian game the prevalence of the full back whose sole remit is to charge up the field has also had a detrimental effect on the quality of central midfielders that the nation has been producing. The BBC’s excellent South American football correspondent Tim Vickery has long bemoaned the fact that fullbacks in Brazil are encouraged to get forward means central midfield players being required to drop back to cover their runs. The result is that defensive players with little to no creative or passing ability pushed into midfield to compensate for the attacking nature of the fullbacks and thus Brazil now lacks central midfielders who are able to dictate tempo and pass and move.
That is just one more negative development in the evolution of the way that fullbacks now seem to play in modern football. It’s as much an issue with the tactics and the ideologies of coaches, about what they are asking their fullbacks to do as much as the players themselves; it’s hard to develop defensive skills if you are no longer required to use them. But the fact remains that for the vast majority of teams, they still need a fullback who knows how to position themselves on a pitch and still knows how to track their man. Being able to strike a ball well or to do a step over in the opposition’s box or indeed just generally look flash and look good on Match of The Day is not good enough when the fact you don’t know how to defend directly costs your side at the other end.
In the modern game, the best players should never be one dimensional, never just good at, or required to do one thing and one thing only, but when the fact that you as a fullback are unable to defend, and it is costing your side games, it starts to become something of a problem.
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