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British footballer-turned-actor Vinnie Jones (known outside of his homeland as the star of Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels), turned the knife on the apparent state of his country of origin in an interview with Radio Times.
Excerpt via Radio Times
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Awful, awful defending from Michael Dawson, who completely switches off and doesn’t keep the defensive line intact. Giroud and Theo Walcott are played onside and have miles upon miles of space to find an easy goal.
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Traditional Jersey Numbers: 7 (right winger), 11 (left winger)
A no-thrills, top-speed wide player. The winger is an unsophisticated attacking position whose only role is to bomb down the edge of the pitch with the ball as fast as possible, before delivering the ball into the penalty area.
Many of the world’s top managers – Roberto Mancini, Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp – no longer use wingers, seeing them as unversatile and preferring to use inside forwards or attacking midfielders instead.
There are still a few wingers in the upper echelons of football. Theo Walcott is famous for his pace and is used as a right winger to deliver crosses to the striker. Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United team never deviated from using wingers, and new Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini’s first signing was lightning-fast winger Jesus Navas.
Theo Walcott assists an Olivier Giroud goal
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The most modern position on this list, and a position popularised by the world’s greatest player – Lionel Messi.
The “false 9” is logically named. They are typically deployed at the beginning of the game as a striker. However they do not hang on the shoulders of defenders attempting to run past them as a traditional number 9 would. Instead, they retreat deeper into the pitch.
This causes problems for the opposing defenders, who are left with a conundrum – either they stay in their position and leave the striker with acres of space, or they continue following him to tightly mark, and leave acres of space where they’re supposed to sit for other players to run into.
Utilising this position well requires complete team cohesion, and intelligent wingers/inside forwards who can track the movements of the opposition and pick the right time to overlap and strike.
(Below: an illustration of the false 9 in work. Dropping back, the defenders push up and follow him, leaving space for the canny winger to exploit)
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The not-so-deep-lying playmaker. The trequartista (“playmaker” in Italian) does largely the same job as a deep-lying playmaker (aka the regista), only further up the pitch. They’ll sit just behind the striker/s, and their focus will be on short passing rather than the deep-lying playmaker’s long range contributions.
The perfect trequartista will be able to find space in between the opponent’s midfield and defensive lines, and exploit this space to pick killer passes forward. They aren’t as burdened with goal scoring responsibility as the second striker or attacking midfielder (although their accuracy and technique usually results in some great goals), and typically don’t have to have the same speed or work rate. Their passing and skill with the ball usually does all the talking.
(Zinedine Zidane: probably the best trequartista of all-time.)
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Sitting deep in the middle of the field, these midfielders are tasked almost exclusively with passing the ball in such a way that it creates attacking opportunities. Often nicknamed “the quarterback role” due to their tendency to sit– mostly stationary– behind the attack and launch long passes forward.
Termed the regista in Italian football, they need an accurate and technically excellent range of passing, and to be able to read the runs of the players around them well. This role has come to be seen as one of the most important to a successful team in the modern game – very few of the world’s best sides operate without and accomplished “regista”.
Below is perhaps the world’s most talented deep-lying playmaker - Xavi - setting up his umpteenth Barcelona attack –
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What is this?
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