[Jonathan Wilson] The Question: Why is the modern offside law a work of genius?

The tweaks of 2005 remain unappreciated but they generated a climate for some of the most beautiful football ever played

Nothing in football is so traduced as the offside law. Most seem to regard it as a piece of killjoy legislation, designed almost to prevent football producing too many goals and being too much fun, while for the punditocracy it has become the universal scapegoat, the thing that "nobody understands". Just because Garth Crooks doesn't get something, though, doesn't make it a bad thing. The modern offside law may be the best thing that's ever happened to football, and it is almost certainly the reason Barcelona have been so successful with a fleet of players whose obvious asset is their technique rather than their physique.

A brief history of offside

The first laws of the game drawn up by the Football Association in 1863 stipulated that a player was offside if he was in front of the ball: "When a player has kicked the ball, anyone of the same side who is nearer to the opponent's goal-line is out of play, and may not touch the ball himself, nor in any way whatever prevent any other player from doing so, until he is in play…" That effectively militated against passing and the assumptions that underlay that culture continued to shape English football for the following decade. English football in those days was all about head-down charging, which is why England were so startled when they encountered the passing approach of Scotland, who had had no such law, in the first international in 1872.

[Zonal Marking] Position Glossary

This website assumes a basic understanding of established football positions and roles – if not, this summary should help provide an introduction.

However, it also uses terms that may be less familiar. Many of these are foreign phrases because, in the same way English football has traditionally lagged behind the rest of Europe tactically, it also lacks the the wide range of tactical phrases used in other countries. Many of these are Italian; where there are, for example, four or five phrases for different types of players that the English would group as ‘forwards’ – see here and here for more detailed explanations. Similarly, English lacks any equivalent of the term ‘carilleros’, the wider players in a diamond midfield, so it is often useful to venture into Italian or Spanish to precisely describe players and positions.

These are all original definitions. Many are a matter of debate, and the foreign terms may be poor translations – so the comments section is open.

Carilleros

Literally ’shuttlers’, this refers to the two widest players in a diamond midfield, inbetween a holding midfielder and an attacking playmaker.

Catenaccio

A frequent mistake is to refer to any type of defensive play as catenaccio. In fact, the word applies to a specific defensive system, made famous by Helenio Herrera’s Inter side of the 1960s, where a very defensive sweeper plays behind a four defenders using a man-marking system. It has become a byword for simply defensive tactics, particularly from Italian sides, but this use is incorrect. The closest we’ve seen to it in recent years is the Greek side of Euro 2004.

[zonalmarking.net] How the 2000s changed tactics

How the 2000s changed tactics #2: Classic Number 10s struggle

The decade started with the most attacking, open tournament in modern football, at Euro 2000. The four semi-finalists all played ‘classic’ Number 10s in the hole between the opposition defence and midfield. France, Italy, Portugal and Holland had Zinedine Zidane, Francesco Totti, Manuel Rui Costa and Dennis Bergkamp respectively – it almost seemed essential to have a player in this mould to be successful – helped by trequartista-less England and Germany’s early exits.

Today, the past two World Players of the Year – Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo – have been primarily wide players who cut inside. Messi and Wayne Rooney would surely have been deployed as trequartistas (or enganches, if you prefer) had they started their career a decade earlier. Indeed, almost every player that would have expected to spend their career behind the front two has had to redefine their game, generally being stationed out wide. As always, playing in a wide role generally requires a fair degree of pace, and in that respect the likes of Messi, Rooney, Andriy Arshavin or Franck Ribery have no problems, and have their place in the modern game. Ronaldo, Rooney, Arshavin, Messi and Totti also been the most prominent five to have filled a false nine role when required.

But what of the players who have neither the necessary qualities to play upfront, nor the pace and trickery to play out wide? Investigating Argentina’s production of “New Maradonas” also takes you down a path that could equally be “Players that failed to live up to their potential“: Juan Riquelme, Pablo Aimar, Andres D’Alessandro and Javier Saviola. That is not to say that they have not been successful for periods – Aimar and Saviola in particular were great for Valencia and Barcelona respectively – but it is undeniable that none of that quartet have achieved what we expected of them.