Kevin Phillips: A REAL number 10
Over the past couple of years a new phenomenon has been born; the Number 10 Role.
What used to be known as playing in the hole, or playing off
or behind the striker, or even a free role, is now playing as a number 10, and
it winds me up something chronic.
Football is a game that when played at its best is fluid and
interchangeable, naming a position after a number doesn’t fit with that notion
at all.
Even at the age of 22 my view on squad numbers appears to be
a very traditional one, because nowadays nobody plays flat 4-4-2 formations.
A mere decade ago, your goalkeeper would wear 1, your
fullbacks 2 and 3, and the central defenders 5 and 6. Midfielders would wear 7,
4, 8 and 11 from right to left, and your little striker would have 10 to your
big guy’s 9. Simple.
When I envisage an archetypal number 10, I think Michael
Owen alongside Emile Heskey, or Kevin Phillips partnered by Niall Quinn.
Even though there was an accepted format, numbers never
labelled the positions, and with squad numbers being issued in league football,
teams rarely lined up with 1-11 on the field, let alone in these exact
positions.
In 2014, 4-4-2 is all but dead, and there is an ever
increasing reliance on the central play maker; the number 10.
Gary Neville has been quoted as saying that in the modern
game everyone wants to be a number 10, and that is at the detriment of
defending, but as far as I can tell it still doesn’t mean anything. Is football
turning into rugby?
Rugby is a sport where the 15 selected players wear numbers
1-15 and the numbers refer to a specific position in the team. One of the
positions is actually named after the number, and the number eight is a
globally recognised term.
The difference that still exists in football, despite the
death of 4-4-2, is that the manager is entitled to play a number of different
formations, meaning that numbers cannot equate to positions.
Louis Van Gaal, the new Manchester United manager, is a fan
of 3-5-2 or 3-4-1-2, and this means some of the positions I labelled with
numbers above don’t even exist.
Despite the fact Van Gaal favours a formation that fans in
English football are not used to watching, it hasn’t stopped him describing
positions as numbers.
"Rooney can play at 10 and nine. He said
to me he can also play 7 and 11. But I like him more at 9 or 10. Kagawa was a
number 10 at Dortmund but I want to try him at number 6 and number 8."
What?
It would
appear that Van Gaal is now conversing predominantly in numbers, and I have no
idea what the future holds for Kagawa. Even if we have come to (begrudgingly)
accept number 10 into the games vocabulary, I have genuinely no idea where a 6
plays, and god help all of us if he fancies the Spain-inspired false-9
formation any time soon.
In terms of
insight, the Dutchman may as well be speaking in binary, and I’m pretty sure
Seven-11 is a convenience store chain, so maybe he’s got Rooney doing the lunch
run…
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