Edinson Cavani has been around for a while. At age 34, the current Manchester United striker has been operating in a Top 5 League in each of the last 15 years and still appears to be as effective as ever, despite niggling injuries over the past few seasons. This is especially impressive when compared with other strikers of his generation. Cavani doesn’t possess the technical talent of Karim Benzema, the physical dominance of Zlatan Ibrahimović or the sheer all-round brilliance of Luis Suarez in his prime, so how has he stuck around at so many top European clubs for so long?
Simply put, Cavani may have the most useful skill a striker can have in football; movement. In both defensive and attacking situations, the Uruguayan striker is perpetually on the move, whether he’s harrying defenders on the ball or making sharp runs in behind to create goalscoring opportunities for himself and his teammates. In this piece, I will focus mainly on Cavani’s movement in the box in an attempt to understand how he’s been able to make himself a consistent threat to defences for the last decade and a half.
The Three Cornerstones
Cavani’s movement in the box is based on three main fundamentals; positioning, acceleration and change in direction. More often than not the first two were what he utilizes most often, with the third used occasionally if when he needs to create more separation from a defender. He often starts out positioning himself between two defenders (or directly behind one if he finds himself in the wider areas), before making sharp runs in behind, after which he may add a change of direction if the defender cuts off his initial run. These three tenets underpin Cavani’s ability to find himself in goalscoring positions on a consistent basis, despite being a fairly average athlete who doesn’t possess the the strength, explosiveness or dribbling ability to create separation from defenders.
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
If the hardest punches are the ones you don’t see coming, Edinson Cavani is a knockout artist. The first thing I noticed when watching Cavani was how often he positioned himself in a defender’s blindspot. He doesn’t just stand between two defenders, instead he uses the defender’s blindside as the reference point for his positioning much the same way a target man would use a defender as their physical reference point.
Watch Cavani’s positioning in the above clip and despite the ball never making it into the box, you see him constantly moving and positioning himself directly in a defender’s blindspot in an attempt to make himself as anonymous as possible. This starting position means he’s always putting himself in a position to get to his spots, as the defender ahead of him doesn’t have him in his eyeline and he’s got a slight headstart on the defender behind him.
A similar thing happens here, Cavani’s constantly moving in an attempt to make his position an enigma to the ballnear defender. However, the ball being passed back causes him to drop off a little and you see what happens when he doesn’t give himself a headstart as he makes a run into the 6 yard box but is beaten there by the Rennes rightback.
This goal is off a set-piece but you can still see the benefits of Cavani’s starting position. He’s lurking in the defender’s blindside and is able to beat him to the ball as the defender switches off for a fraction of a second while the defender behind him is preoccupied with other players in the box. Certainly some lackadaisical defending from Yaya Touré there but also an absolutely beautiful move and finish from El Matador (that celebration is just the cherry on top, love a passionate man).
Knifing through the Defence
This brings us to the second cornerstone of Cavani’s movement and it’s his darting runs in behind. As mentioned before, his positioning on the last line and on the blindside of defenders gives him an edge that counteracts his lack of explosiveness, allowing him to beat them to the ball. This is aided by the sharpness and decisiveness of his runs in behind, as Cavani immediately attacks space in behind the moment it becomes available in an attempt to further catch the opposing defenders off-guard.
This allows him to rack up shots from extremely high value areas between the width of the 6 yard box and from very close distances (ranging between 10.2 and 13.9 yards over the past 5 seasons according to Statsbomb via fbref), as seen in the shot map below (courtesy of the excellent ggshakeR).
Cavani‘s relentlessness also means he’s willing to make multiple runs within a short span of time even if his run doesn’t get picked out the first time. In the clip below he makes a quick run in behind but doesn’t receive the pass. Instead of sulking, he immediately resets and makes another aggressive run after the ball goes out wide but the keeper cuts it out.
What makes Cavani’s runs so dangerous is how well-timed they are. Although he’s liable to get called offside fairly often as with most last line strikers, he is extremely adept at timing his runs. Part of this is down to his aforementioned positioning, as his insistence on “hiding” behind defenders means he’s able to keep both them and the ball in his line of sight, thus allowing him to time his runs well enough to beat any potential offside trap. However, he’s also a master at using the momentum of defenders against them, often dropping slightly just to dart in behind as the opposition backline pushes up.
This works the other way too, as if the defence drops deep to overplay his runs into depth, he’s more than comfortable using that to drop off and attack the cutback instead. Against Manchester City in 2011–12, Joleon Lescott and Vincent Kompany constantly dropped off in order to keep Cavani from being able to stretch the pitch so here he allows Hamšík to become the nominal striker and instead drops off to move the ball wide before drifting into the box and attacking the cutback.
Step, Plant, Shift
No quality goalscorer worth their salt is complete without a double movement in their arsenal and Cavani is no different. He especially loves to fake a nearpost run before planting and pivoting to go the long way round the defender when he takes the bait.
In the clip above he starts a little too deep to beat his marker to the 6 yard box first so he decides instead he decides to shift his direction slightly to get around the defender instead of attempting to get past him (and that beautifully weighted ball makes his job even easier). This allows him to beat the defender to the ball while simultaneously creating space to get his shot off in stride.
A similar thing happens in the next clip as well. What makes this even more creative is this time Cavani does start high enough to beat his marker to the 6 yard box but his inability to match Neymar’s explosive acceleration means he decides against the straight line run and instead allows his defender to get ahead of him at a jogging speed before immediately accelerating around to get into the 6 yard box. He doesn’t receive the ensuing pass but the incisiveness of his run drags his defender deeper and creates enough space around the penalty box for Mbappé to ghost into for a cutback.
Deceleration tends to play a big part in Cavani’s double movements and it helps compensate for his lack of explosiveness as an athlete. This is something utilized a lot in wilier professional athletes who don’t possess amazing burst and Cavani is a master at slowing down to lull centerbacks into a false sense of security before shifting directions to make space to receive a pass. He utilizes it most often when the change in direction is too sharp for him to perform at high speeds and it’s particularly evident in the clip below where he slows down his run at the edge of the box before drifting off the back of the fullback to receive the cross. He badly flubs the finish but I prefer to admire the process in this situation rather than dwelling on the result (not to mention they are four goals up with three minutes left so he can afford a little self-indulgence).
This next clip might be my favourite, it’s the elusive and rarely seen triple movement! The idea behind the move is fantastic, the first run drags the left sided CB closer to his marker but also creates some space between him and his fullback. This creates ample space for Cavani to knife through and usually he would continue this run to the farpost. Instead he elects to go for a third burst of pace in an attempt to meet the nearpost cross but if you look closely, you can see he struggles a bit attempting to shift his direction and speeds for a third time in the same run (although if the cross is better, he should still be able to beat the keeper to the ball).
This shows how important offball movement can be in situations like these, as Cavani essentially creates the space for the cross by himself without ever getting a touch of the ball.
Conclusion
Watching Cavani for this piece showed me exactly how important a striker’s movement on the last line and in the box is when it comes to chance creation. There tends to be a fixation in football with the creator (and understandably so, they are still overwhelmingly responsible in the process of creation) but sometimes, the movement of the receiver is just as important as the pass. From the likes of Ezequiel Lavezzi and Marek Hamšík in 2012 to Neymar, Angel Di Maria and Kylian Mbappé in 2018, there’s no doubt Cavani has benefited from playing with some of the best creators of the decade. My hope is that this article proves that these phenomenal creators were made even better by Cavani’s presence in the same way Cavani was made better by theirs.
