Dark Savante
21 Jan 2008, 10:44 AM
In war a wave of attack usually relates to a number of units mobilising in sequential order, one after the other. Depending on tactical instruction given and the number of troops at hand, the number of waves can vary greatly.
In football, a wave of attack usually relates to the three distinct outfield compartments of a team: Forwards, midfielders and defenders, thus:
4-4-2
1st wave: --------------Striker
---------------Support Striker
2nd wave:
Winger--------------------------------Winger
----------Midfielder---Midfielder
3rd wave:
Full-back------------------------------Full-back
----------Centre-back-Centre-back
Of course, if we were to get technical and rather pedantic, we could say that the 1st and 2nd wave can be broken down further into this:
1st wave: Striker
2nd wave: Support Striker
3rd wave: Wingers
4th wave: (A) Midfielder(s)
5th wave: Full-backs
6th wave: (A) Centre-back(s)
But, that’s not really how I recognise it and for simplicities sake, I will be leaving this at three distinct waves.
Purpose
The purpose of each wave from a tactical perspective is usually to generate enough space and opportunity for a player on the team to have a goal-scoring chance or increase the odds of there being a goal via their interference with the opposition-schematic.
An example of this can be observed in every single game you’ve ever seen in your life in the constant striker vs. centre-back battle. The first wave of an attack always aims to occupy and stretch the very heart of the side they are trying to break down. Depending on the talent of the players in the first wave of an attack, you can figure out just how many players one single wave of attack can occupy.
As a single player in a one-wave attack Didier Drogba is probably the most difficult opponent in world football. Luca Toni is another who has his moments also. The reason why I believe them to be at the forefront in this aspect of the game is the combination of attributes both players have and the constant need for assistance from midfielders that centre-backs who face them need. The combination of pace, power, aerial ability, doggedness, long-range ability and awkwardness both players represent, often means that the second wave of attack for their teams are given a freer ride of it when it comes to build-up play because the defensive schematic in place to stop them has often been broken down or forced into change or panic, which obviously drives, say, a defensive midfielder back to help and has him abandon the midfielder(s) he had his eye on during the build-up play, allowing said midfielder the room and opportunities he wouldn’t be afforded without the ‘battering ram’s’ presence and disruption.
As a duo in a one-wave attack we can look to numerous partnerships around the world and discuss the pros and cons of what they do without really having a numero uno, but rather a preference due to style. I haven’t done the statistical work to know by productivity who are the most devastating partnerships in world football right now, but would say, by my own eye, that Ruud Van Nistlerooy and Raul are the most dangerous I’ve seen this season. The intent is always there with RVN, which of course is what he is famed for. If there is a half-chance he’ll be on it and with Raul’s resurgence and experience, you see these two constantly wreaking havoc with defensive set-ups that they face, which enables the second wave for their side to have quite a party in behind them.
In a trio one-wave attack there’s no side currently better than Manchester United – to the point where a whopping 33 out of 46 league goals in 23 games has been scored by one from Ronaldo, Rooney or Tevez. That’s 71.7% of the total output of goals coming from one wave of attack, and whilst I am not going to work out the percentage output of the first waves of our attack from previous sides (especially pre-Ruud) I’m certain that those numbers are at least top 3 during Fergie’s entire tenure here.
The Second Wave of Attack
In every club side in the world you can be assured that two waves of attack will be employed in every single game they play. The second wave most often supplies the majority of goals for the first whilst scoring a fair share themselves. A simple way to figure out the second wave of the attack in sides you’re unsure about is to observe the mobilisation of the midfield unit as soon as an attack starts. Normally the two wide-men will bomb on up the pitch and one central or attacking midfielder will be involved in the attack as well.. The personnel and positioning of the second-wave attackers will vary tremendously from one formation to another. i.e, an orthodox or ‘dual-winged’ 4-4-2 fits the precise description given above in this paragraph.
A diamond 4-4-2, however, would not. In this instance the second wave is most often the central man at the top end of the diamond – the attacking midfielder – and from there a number of variations regarding ‘waves’ can occur, be it the full-backs expected to join whilst the wider midfielders in the centre hold position and join as a cautious third wave, wary of the counter:
Diamond 4-4-2
1st wave:
-------- --------------Striker
-------------Support Striker
2nd wave:
----------------Attacking Midfielder
^---------------------------------------------^
FB------------------------------------------FB
3rd wave:-----^----------------------^
-----Central Midfielder---Central Midfielder
This system is mostly seen in South America. The last magical exponent of it that I remember was the early 2000’s River Plate Model which had Leonardo Astrada at the back of diamond as the DM .
Or, a basic mobilisation of the second wave as either three attacking midfielders running at an equidistance to each other, or one attacking midfielder flanked by two box-to-box men expected to run forward whilst sweeping up scraps defensively if needs be, which relegates the full-backs to the more orthodox role of 3rd wave of the attack, which they are generally used as all over the world.
As this thread isn’t intended to be a formation discussion I will avoid doing other systems, although, this stuff is very easy to work out for yourselves if you take a moment to consider how a side you watch attacks. Their patterns and routines can be figured out within five attacks, usually.
A productive second wave can be universally acknowledged by it’s contribution to the team as an attacking force. In this aspect, we are way, way down on what is typically Manchester United as there are no goals coming from the middle of the pitch, nor are there assists being supplied with abundance. There’s no doubt we can improve vastly in this area this season.
The Third Wave Of Attack
I can finally get to the bones of the thread now that I’ve laid some decent enough foundations (I hope) and discuss what the third wave of an attack does and why it can be so lethal to an attacking team. In the first and second wave of attacks there is no deviation whatsoever from the well-trodden path – every team in the world uses at least two waves of attack, without exception, but in the third wave things diversify dramatically and where with the first two waves a uniform, set-in-stone method is apparent, come the third wave and you’ll really see what the philosophy of the team in question is about.
A team that doesn’t commit full-backs to the attack is almost always seen as negative and defensive. Reason being is that if your full-backs rarely commit to the attack you’re ensuring there will be no room for the opposing team to spring counters into space you’ve abandoned by brashly venturing forward. You’re ensuring that your own defensive scheme is intact first and foremost and the term ‘caution to the wind’ is non-applicable to your side. Mourinho’s Chelsea were renowned for it and counter-attacking them was incredibly difficult because there was never a lack of shape to actually exploit, which is one of the foundations of a good counter-attack.
On the other side of the coin famous exponents of marvellous third wave attacking can be seen in many teams over the last 15 years. A few of the most awesome being: Brazil with Cafu and Roberto Carlos; Arsenal’s left side with Cole, Pires and Henry; Real Madrid with Roberto Carlos and Fernando Hierro; Germany with Mathias Sammer; Manchester United with Gary Neville and Denis Irwin; Barcelona with Sergi and Koeman; France with Lizarizu and Thuram. There are others, but I think it becomes quite fractious after these teams, namely because the effectiveness of the sides is not backed-up with trophies or the ability to leap the final hurdle with a strong influence from the third wave of their attack.
In each of these sides the players who were nominally defenders had an immense influence on the overall attacking intent and influence of their teams, you can go as far as to say that without them, said teams would not have been able to deliver in the same way and the very foundations and ethos of said teams would have to alter dramatically without the influence of these third-wave players. I will take three or four from the pack to discuss in further detail.
Understanding the third wave and it’s influence
It’s not hard to spot a dynamic full-back or a centre-back who comes up routinely from the back. If you haven’t spotted him, the commentators and pundits will alert you to their presence soon enough. There’s your generic attackers, which nearly every side who isn’t defensive have, who run on tracks up and down the flanks constantly and reap benefits for their team eventually via the tried and tested methods, and then there are the dynamic full-backs and central defenders who are so devastating at what they do when they join an attack from the third-wave, that they have to be planned for as individuals.
The three most notorious third-wavers in the list above are Roberto Carlos, Mathias Sammer and Cafu, in that order. There was a point in Roberto Carlos’ career that he was responsible for 33% of Real Madrid’s scoring ratio over a season! This was a statistic that tpmazembe presented to us in one of the greatest projects ever seen on Big Soccer, and I don’t think anyone who saw Robarto Carlos in full-flight would question. He, like Ashley Cole for the ‘Invincible’ season at Arsenal, was constantly seen to overload the left flank to bursting point, which played havoc with the opposition schematics and saw him along with Redondo and Raul in the first incarnation, and then he Solari and Zidane come together to win Real Madrid three European Cups in six years, he had a massive hand in each and every one of the cups and it was from his side of the field that the majority of the games in each of those tournaments were won.
The same pretty much goes for Cafu, but with a much lower goal-threat and a more considered and balanced approach to defending. As most of his best games were for country rather than club, he is not held in the same esteem as his erstwhile left-back partner.
Mathias Sammer is a legend for a many reasons. The main one being that this was a sweeper who read the game and came up as the third wave of attack with such devastating ease and aplomb that he was seen as the first true successor to Franz Beckenbauer the world had seen. For both Borussia Dortmund and Germany he held the ultimate influence and his timely contributions to the attack for both teams won them top honours. For his newly-formed country (he was East German and re-unified with the West after the Berlin Wall crumbled) he was one of, if not the most influential and determinable figure for them winning Euro ’96, and for Dortmund his brilliance took them to the European Cup. What made Sammer unique to the list is that he was a ball-carrier first and foremost. His runs would start from an extremely deep position and would continue through midfield, into the final third and further still, into goal-scoring or shooting positions at which time he would always do the best thing in a given scenario. If that meant shooting and scoring or passing and being an essential cog in a goal, he could deliver in equal measure.
Now to understand why these players were able to influence the game so routinely from such deep initial positions requires us to look at the schematic of one side overlaid with another. In most situations the first wave of the attack pre-occupies the central defensive pairing first and foremost, the second wave tussle between themselves in what is the most decisive area of the pitch (the midfield battle) and a third wave of attack tends to mobilise once the second wave have shown themselves to be dominant over the opposition. The third wave obviously has to pick and chose when to go forward because it is extremely tiring to run from 70 yards out to make up the ground only for the attack to fail.
You have one type of system that intends to simply force this issue by overloading a flank with men and forcing the opposition to break ranks in order to match three men against three – this is something Wenger’s Arsenal were absolutely superb at when Ashley Cole was there. The third wave players effectively becomes the spare man or the guy with a free role once the 2nd wave player takes the wide man tracking him with him and the first wave player who has drifted to a flank has taken a full-back and a centre-back out of position. Of course this boils down to the quality of the players involved, their intelligence and their technique and one touch ability. At the time of the ‘Invincible’ season Robert Pires and Thierry Henry were practically unplayable at a domestic level and both needed a double-team to be contained in the first place, so when you add on an immense attacking full-back with the understanding of where to go to reap the benefits of being the free man, it becomes clear immediately how and why the third wave can be so effective. If a lesser trio tried the same tactics, it’d more than likely lead to a painful lesson in counter attacking football.
This talent level of the first and second wave is essential to all the teams and exponents of spectacular third wave play. All of the teams I mentioned above that these players came from were incredible and that’s when and why the third wave can essentially be free for the duration of an attack. What it requires, however, is an innate and automatic understanding of where those who are covering should go once the defender beside them saunters off up the field.
Mathias Sammer had two stoppers beside him in a three-man backline which basically meant they became a centre-back pairing once he broke rank and went up-field. He also had two solid midfielders who would sit and allow him to go past them – these measures were all put in place so that if Sammer did lose the ball on one of his runs, the shape of the team wasn’t susceptible to collapse should a rapid counter be sprung. In both Roberto Carlos’ teams he was covered in central midfield by one of the best to have ever played the position in Fernando Redondo who read the situations and covered Carlos smoothly, and then another in Claude Makelele who was equally immense defensively. At national level Carlos was also afforded a DM on his inside and then a 3-5-2 set-up by Scolari, which gave him the protection Sammer was privy to. The same kind of protection was also afforded to Ashley Cole with Gilberto constantly anchoring the galavanting trio.
In all instances it is essential that the play ahead of the third wave is comfortably controlled by the midfield as the function of the third wave is to act as an extra man or men, one who is free because the other side is occupied by those ahead of them. The best third wave attackers tend to be opportunistic and able to understand where space is likely to develop.
So what does that mean for us?
We are a developing team at the moment. We’re not even sure what our first xi is or what the jobs of the central midfielders should be. Currently they deliver no goals and are not particularly dangerous as a component in the second wave of our attack. I alluded to this earlier in the thread as being not United-like in the slightest – normal service for us used to mean goals and assists through the middle. Our third wave essentially played in a more routine manner, which revolved around common sense i.e a player like a prime Ryan Giggs gets the ball on the flank, you, as a full-back, are going to have lots of chances to run in behind him, knowing Ryan’s ability, pace and consistency in committing more than one man to him meant running in behind him is likely to pay off, even if you are just playing the numbers.
Then you have a player like Patrice Evra who has the foundations and dynamism of a Roberto Carlos at times with the way he tries to [u]make[/u[ things happen, rather than play the numbers in behind a winger. Where we could probably wonder what could be is in the right flank and Rio Ferdinand. The absence of Gary Neville clearly imbalances our attack. Feasibly, with Ronaldo wreaking the havoc he is currently and the amount of men he commits to attempt to contain him, the right-back, if he were an attacking one, or at least comfortable going up, would have a field day in all that space.
I think we’ve seen in young Simpson’s few games the effect on the team a proper overlapping full-back can have in the current side. Simpson has been unlucky on at least two attempts and realistically could have had three goals in less than ten games for us! The positions he gets himself into are those you would expect of Evra on the other flank and I do believe this side will add an extra dimension once we have a proper full-back out there, whether that’s Gary, Danny or a new guy remains to be seen.
Finally, we get to Rio and the biggest quandary of them all. To go straight through the middle of an opposing side from a centre-back position is perhaps the most foolhardy thing to do in football unless you are a player of exceptional technical and tactical understanding of what’s going on around you and how to exploit it to suit you. Sammer is the modern-day master of this, no player has come close to dictating a game from deep or influencing it so many times by actual carriage of the ball.
In Rio we have a footballer of high all-round acumen, to the point where you could say he could comfortably play a number of positions on the pitch if he wasn’t so damn good in his nominal one. When Rio carries the ball up from the back you feel quite assured he can skip past one or two players, play a one-two, run into space where he senses the ball will go or even get himself into goal-scoring positions. He has shown far more adroitness in the final third than Carrick and Hargreaves combined – Rio seems to know what to do in final 3rd situations, something you need from a dynamic third wave attacker – and on his one or two jaunts up-field, there’s more sense of danger or something happening to the good, than I think you get from either of the aforementioned midfielders during an entire match.
As an actual footballer, considering everything that encompasses, it’s quite hard to gauge where Rio’s actual level lies. We see glimpses of this or that skill, but definitively it’s hard to know whether Rio can do that more often than he can’t. It would seem to me that he can, because on the few moves he involves himself with in the final 3rd the play does not break down at his feet, unless his shot goes wide, which is quite different.
If it is indeed the case that Rio has such a level to his game, it could make more sense for him to break from the back with Carrick and Hargreaves sitting in behind him that vice versa in games where we are dictating play.
Carrick is very hesitant and unsure of himself in the final third – far more uncomfortable and indecisive there than Rio, for certain, and Hargreaves is even worse.. Rio actually has more goals than the two of them combined, well, he in fact has three goals to their combined total of zero.. funnily enough, in what must be about an eighth of the time spent up-field than the pair of them.
What this points to, I think is fairly apparent. If the central pairing consists of those two, we’d do better to have them sit behind Rio during attacks than to get in his way. The obvious concern is the counter measures that open up if a centre-back is not in position, but if we have a side pushed back, it’s much, much harder to go route one and punt to a single man who is covered by a CB and two midfielders sitting in midfield, than it is to get into the space two midfielders pushed high up the pitch leave in behind themselves , which always means carriage of the ball a good forty yards before they are met by the CB pairing behind them.
I don’t know if we’ll see a conscious effort to get Rio into a proper and recognised role as a Sammer-type of player, but I really think it should be considered with the poor central midfield pairings we have out there in the offensive sense at times.
In football, a wave of attack usually relates to the three distinct outfield compartments of a team: Forwards, midfielders and defenders, thus:
4-4-2
1st wave: --------------Striker
---------------Support Striker
2nd wave:
Winger--------------------------------Winger
----------Midfielder---Midfielder
3rd wave:
Full-back------------------------------Full-back
----------Centre-back-Centre-back
Of course, if we were to get technical and rather pedantic, we could say that the 1st and 2nd wave can be broken down further into this:
1st wave: Striker
2nd wave: Support Striker
3rd wave: Wingers
4th wave: (A) Midfielder(s)
5th wave: Full-backs
6th wave: (A) Centre-back(s)
But, that’s not really how I recognise it and for simplicities sake, I will be leaving this at three distinct waves.
Purpose
The purpose of each wave from a tactical perspective is usually to generate enough space and opportunity for a player on the team to have a goal-scoring chance or increase the odds of there being a goal via their interference with the opposition-schematic.
An example of this can be observed in every single game you’ve ever seen in your life in the constant striker vs. centre-back battle. The first wave of an attack always aims to occupy and stretch the very heart of the side they are trying to break down. Depending on the talent of the players in the first wave of an attack, you can figure out just how many players one single wave of attack can occupy.
As a single player in a one-wave attack Didier Drogba is probably the most difficult opponent in world football. Luca Toni is another who has his moments also. The reason why I believe them to be at the forefront in this aspect of the game is the combination of attributes both players have and the constant need for assistance from midfielders that centre-backs who face them need. The combination of pace, power, aerial ability, doggedness, long-range ability and awkwardness both players represent, often means that the second wave of attack for their teams are given a freer ride of it when it comes to build-up play because the defensive schematic in place to stop them has often been broken down or forced into change or panic, which obviously drives, say, a defensive midfielder back to help and has him abandon the midfielder(s) he had his eye on during the build-up play, allowing said midfielder the room and opportunities he wouldn’t be afforded without the ‘battering ram’s’ presence and disruption.
As a duo in a one-wave attack we can look to numerous partnerships around the world and discuss the pros and cons of what they do without really having a numero uno, but rather a preference due to style. I haven’t done the statistical work to know by productivity who are the most devastating partnerships in world football right now, but would say, by my own eye, that Ruud Van Nistlerooy and Raul are the most dangerous I’ve seen this season. The intent is always there with RVN, which of course is what he is famed for. If there is a half-chance he’ll be on it and with Raul’s resurgence and experience, you see these two constantly wreaking havoc with defensive set-ups that they face, which enables the second wave for their side to have quite a party in behind them.
In a trio one-wave attack there’s no side currently better than Manchester United – to the point where a whopping 33 out of 46 league goals in 23 games has been scored by one from Ronaldo, Rooney or Tevez. That’s 71.7% of the total output of goals coming from one wave of attack, and whilst I am not going to work out the percentage output of the first waves of our attack from previous sides (especially pre-Ruud) I’m certain that those numbers are at least top 3 during Fergie’s entire tenure here.
The Second Wave of Attack
In every club side in the world you can be assured that two waves of attack will be employed in every single game they play. The second wave most often supplies the majority of goals for the first whilst scoring a fair share themselves. A simple way to figure out the second wave of the attack in sides you’re unsure about is to observe the mobilisation of the midfield unit as soon as an attack starts. Normally the two wide-men will bomb on up the pitch and one central or attacking midfielder will be involved in the attack as well.. The personnel and positioning of the second-wave attackers will vary tremendously from one formation to another. i.e, an orthodox or ‘dual-winged’ 4-4-2 fits the precise description given above in this paragraph.
A diamond 4-4-2, however, would not. In this instance the second wave is most often the central man at the top end of the diamond – the attacking midfielder – and from there a number of variations regarding ‘waves’ can occur, be it the full-backs expected to join whilst the wider midfielders in the centre hold position and join as a cautious third wave, wary of the counter:
Diamond 4-4-2
1st wave:
-------- --------------Striker
-------------Support Striker
2nd wave:
----------------Attacking Midfielder
^---------------------------------------------^
FB------------------------------------------FB
3rd wave:-----^----------------------^
-----Central Midfielder---Central Midfielder
This system is mostly seen in South America. The last magical exponent of it that I remember was the early 2000’s River Plate Model which had Leonardo Astrada at the back of diamond as the DM .
Or, a basic mobilisation of the second wave as either three attacking midfielders running at an equidistance to each other, or one attacking midfielder flanked by two box-to-box men expected to run forward whilst sweeping up scraps defensively if needs be, which relegates the full-backs to the more orthodox role of 3rd wave of the attack, which they are generally used as all over the world.
As this thread isn’t intended to be a formation discussion I will avoid doing other systems, although, this stuff is very easy to work out for yourselves if you take a moment to consider how a side you watch attacks. Their patterns and routines can be figured out within five attacks, usually.
A productive second wave can be universally acknowledged by it’s contribution to the team as an attacking force. In this aspect, we are way, way down on what is typically Manchester United as there are no goals coming from the middle of the pitch, nor are there assists being supplied with abundance. There’s no doubt we can improve vastly in this area this season.
The Third Wave Of Attack
I can finally get to the bones of the thread now that I’ve laid some decent enough foundations (I hope) and discuss what the third wave of an attack does and why it can be so lethal to an attacking team. In the first and second wave of attacks there is no deviation whatsoever from the well-trodden path – every team in the world uses at least two waves of attack, without exception, but in the third wave things diversify dramatically and where with the first two waves a uniform, set-in-stone method is apparent, come the third wave and you’ll really see what the philosophy of the team in question is about.
A team that doesn’t commit full-backs to the attack is almost always seen as negative and defensive. Reason being is that if your full-backs rarely commit to the attack you’re ensuring there will be no room for the opposing team to spring counters into space you’ve abandoned by brashly venturing forward. You’re ensuring that your own defensive scheme is intact first and foremost and the term ‘caution to the wind’ is non-applicable to your side. Mourinho’s Chelsea were renowned for it and counter-attacking them was incredibly difficult because there was never a lack of shape to actually exploit, which is one of the foundations of a good counter-attack.
On the other side of the coin famous exponents of marvellous third wave attacking can be seen in many teams over the last 15 years. A few of the most awesome being: Brazil with Cafu and Roberto Carlos; Arsenal’s left side with Cole, Pires and Henry; Real Madrid with Roberto Carlos and Fernando Hierro; Germany with Mathias Sammer; Manchester United with Gary Neville and Denis Irwin; Barcelona with Sergi and Koeman; France with Lizarizu and Thuram. There are others, but I think it becomes quite fractious after these teams, namely because the effectiveness of the sides is not backed-up with trophies or the ability to leap the final hurdle with a strong influence from the third wave of their attack.
In each of these sides the players who were nominally defenders had an immense influence on the overall attacking intent and influence of their teams, you can go as far as to say that without them, said teams would not have been able to deliver in the same way and the very foundations and ethos of said teams would have to alter dramatically without the influence of these third-wave players. I will take three or four from the pack to discuss in further detail.
Understanding the third wave and it’s influence
It’s not hard to spot a dynamic full-back or a centre-back who comes up routinely from the back. If you haven’t spotted him, the commentators and pundits will alert you to their presence soon enough. There’s your generic attackers, which nearly every side who isn’t defensive have, who run on tracks up and down the flanks constantly and reap benefits for their team eventually via the tried and tested methods, and then there are the dynamic full-backs and central defenders who are so devastating at what they do when they join an attack from the third-wave, that they have to be planned for as individuals.
The three most notorious third-wavers in the list above are Roberto Carlos, Mathias Sammer and Cafu, in that order. There was a point in Roberto Carlos’ career that he was responsible for 33% of Real Madrid’s scoring ratio over a season! This was a statistic that tpmazembe presented to us in one of the greatest projects ever seen on Big Soccer, and I don’t think anyone who saw Robarto Carlos in full-flight would question. He, like Ashley Cole for the ‘Invincible’ season at Arsenal, was constantly seen to overload the left flank to bursting point, which played havoc with the opposition schematics and saw him along with Redondo and Raul in the first incarnation, and then he Solari and Zidane come together to win Real Madrid three European Cups in six years, he had a massive hand in each and every one of the cups and it was from his side of the field that the majority of the games in each of those tournaments were won.
The same pretty much goes for Cafu, but with a much lower goal-threat and a more considered and balanced approach to defending. As most of his best games were for country rather than club, he is not held in the same esteem as his erstwhile left-back partner.
Mathias Sammer is a legend for a many reasons. The main one being that this was a sweeper who read the game and came up as the third wave of attack with such devastating ease and aplomb that he was seen as the first true successor to Franz Beckenbauer the world had seen. For both Borussia Dortmund and Germany he held the ultimate influence and his timely contributions to the attack for both teams won them top honours. For his newly-formed country (he was East German and re-unified with the West after the Berlin Wall crumbled) he was one of, if not the most influential and determinable figure for them winning Euro ’96, and for Dortmund his brilliance took them to the European Cup. What made Sammer unique to the list is that he was a ball-carrier first and foremost. His runs would start from an extremely deep position and would continue through midfield, into the final third and further still, into goal-scoring or shooting positions at which time he would always do the best thing in a given scenario. If that meant shooting and scoring or passing and being an essential cog in a goal, he could deliver in equal measure.
Now to understand why these players were able to influence the game so routinely from such deep initial positions requires us to look at the schematic of one side overlaid with another. In most situations the first wave of the attack pre-occupies the central defensive pairing first and foremost, the second wave tussle between themselves in what is the most decisive area of the pitch (the midfield battle) and a third wave of attack tends to mobilise once the second wave have shown themselves to be dominant over the opposition. The third wave obviously has to pick and chose when to go forward because it is extremely tiring to run from 70 yards out to make up the ground only for the attack to fail.
You have one type of system that intends to simply force this issue by overloading a flank with men and forcing the opposition to break ranks in order to match three men against three – this is something Wenger’s Arsenal were absolutely superb at when Ashley Cole was there. The third wave players effectively becomes the spare man or the guy with a free role once the 2nd wave player takes the wide man tracking him with him and the first wave player who has drifted to a flank has taken a full-back and a centre-back out of position. Of course this boils down to the quality of the players involved, their intelligence and their technique and one touch ability. At the time of the ‘Invincible’ season Robert Pires and Thierry Henry were practically unplayable at a domestic level and both needed a double-team to be contained in the first place, so when you add on an immense attacking full-back with the understanding of where to go to reap the benefits of being the free man, it becomes clear immediately how and why the third wave can be so effective. If a lesser trio tried the same tactics, it’d more than likely lead to a painful lesson in counter attacking football.
This talent level of the first and second wave is essential to all the teams and exponents of spectacular third wave play. All of the teams I mentioned above that these players came from were incredible and that’s when and why the third wave can essentially be free for the duration of an attack. What it requires, however, is an innate and automatic understanding of where those who are covering should go once the defender beside them saunters off up the field.
Mathias Sammer had two stoppers beside him in a three-man backline which basically meant they became a centre-back pairing once he broke rank and went up-field. He also had two solid midfielders who would sit and allow him to go past them – these measures were all put in place so that if Sammer did lose the ball on one of his runs, the shape of the team wasn’t susceptible to collapse should a rapid counter be sprung. In both Roberto Carlos’ teams he was covered in central midfield by one of the best to have ever played the position in Fernando Redondo who read the situations and covered Carlos smoothly, and then another in Claude Makelele who was equally immense defensively. At national level Carlos was also afforded a DM on his inside and then a 3-5-2 set-up by Scolari, which gave him the protection Sammer was privy to. The same kind of protection was also afforded to Ashley Cole with Gilberto constantly anchoring the galavanting trio.
In all instances it is essential that the play ahead of the third wave is comfortably controlled by the midfield as the function of the third wave is to act as an extra man or men, one who is free because the other side is occupied by those ahead of them. The best third wave attackers tend to be opportunistic and able to understand where space is likely to develop.
So what does that mean for us?
We are a developing team at the moment. We’re not even sure what our first xi is or what the jobs of the central midfielders should be. Currently they deliver no goals and are not particularly dangerous as a component in the second wave of our attack. I alluded to this earlier in the thread as being not United-like in the slightest – normal service for us used to mean goals and assists through the middle. Our third wave essentially played in a more routine manner, which revolved around common sense i.e a player like a prime Ryan Giggs gets the ball on the flank, you, as a full-back, are going to have lots of chances to run in behind him, knowing Ryan’s ability, pace and consistency in committing more than one man to him meant running in behind him is likely to pay off, even if you are just playing the numbers.
Then you have a player like Patrice Evra who has the foundations and dynamism of a Roberto Carlos at times with the way he tries to [u]make[/u[ things happen, rather than play the numbers in behind a winger. Where we could probably wonder what could be is in the right flank and Rio Ferdinand. The absence of Gary Neville clearly imbalances our attack. Feasibly, with Ronaldo wreaking the havoc he is currently and the amount of men he commits to attempt to contain him, the right-back, if he were an attacking one, or at least comfortable going up, would have a field day in all that space.
I think we’ve seen in young Simpson’s few games the effect on the team a proper overlapping full-back can have in the current side. Simpson has been unlucky on at least two attempts and realistically could have had three goals in less than ten games for us! The positions he gets himself into are those you would expect of Evra on the other flank and I do believe this side will add an extra dimension once we have a proper full-back out there, whether that’s Gary, Danny or a new guy remains to be seen.
Finally, we get to Rio and the biggest quandary of them all. To go straight through the middle of an opposing side from a centre-back position is perhaps the most foolhardy thing to do in football unless you are a player of exceptional technical and tactical understanding of what’s going on around you and how to exploit it to suit you. Sammer is the modern-day master of this, no player has come close to dictating a game from deep or influencing it so many times by actual carriage of the ball.
In Rio we have a footballer of high all-round acumen, to the point where you could say he could comfortably play a number of positions on the pitch if he wasn’t so damn good in his nominal one. When Rio carries the ball up from the back you feel quite assured he can skip past one or two players, play a one-two, run into space where he senses the ball will go or even get himself into goal-scoring positions. He has shown far more adroitness in the final third than Carrick and Hargreaves combined – Rio seems to know what to do in final 3rd situations, something you need from a dynamic third wave attacker – and on his one or two jaunts up-field, there’s more sense of danger or something happening to the good, than I think you get from either of the aforementioned midfielders during an entire match.
As an actual footballer, considering everything that encompasses, it’s quite hard to gauge where Rio’s actual level lies. We see glimpses of this or that skill, but definitively it’s hard to know whether Rio can do that more often than he can’t. It would seem to me that he can, because on the few moves he involves himself with in the final 3rd the play does not break down at his feet, unless his shot goes wide, which is quite different.
If it is indeed the case that Rio has such a level to his game, it could make more sense for him to break from the back with Carrick and Hargreaves sitting in behind him that vice versa in games where we are dictating play.
Carrick is very hesitant and unsure of himself in the final third – far more uncomfortable and indecisive there than Rio, for certain, and Hargreaves is even worse.. Rio actually has more goals than the two of them combined, well, he in fact has three goals to their combined total of zero.. funnily enough, in what must be about an eighth of the time spent up-field than the pair of them.
What this points to, I think is fairly apparent. If the central pairing consists of those two, we’d do better to have them sit behind Rio during attacks than to get in his way. The obvious concern is the counter measures that open up if a centre-back is not in position, but if we have a side pushed back, it’s much, much harder to go route one and punt to a single man who is covered by a CB and two midfielders sitting in midfield, than it is to get into the space two midfielders pushed high up the pitch leave in behind themselves , which always means carriage of the ball a good forty yards before they are met by the CB pairing behind them.
I don’t know if we’ll see a conscious effort to get Rio into a proper and recognised role as a Sammer-type of player, but I really think it should be considered with the poor central midfield pairings we have out there in the offensive sense at times.