The Shortage Of The Classic №9 — The Lack Of Top Class Strikers In The Modern Game Is Largely Apparent
The year is 2002, the bustling Mumbai rains have engulfed the city & a twelve year old boy heads to school not wanting to go to class that day because Brazil play England in the QFs at the 2002 FIFA World Cup in Korea & Japan. PCs are a thing, mobile phones are basic & everyone plays snake on their Nokia phones & Google is in its infancy so the news of the game has come via the morning’s papers.
The twelve year old boy is a striker, who just got his much desired no.9 jersey a couple of years before that to represent the school team as a forward, except in those days it was called ‘left-out’ or an inside forward on the left wing in the modern game. The boy’s two favourite strikers are lining up against each other — Brazil’s Ronaldo Nazario & England’s Michael Owen.
It’s the short-break as it was called in school. It’s just a year before becoming a teenager, the boy is pis*ed that he can’t watch the game. So, out of that innocent rage, he storms into the TV room on the second floor & yells at the staff there to switch on the TV to put the game on.
We’re just in time, Michael Owen opens the scoring, after a mistake by Brazilian defender Lucio in the 23rd minute. David Beckham joins in the celebration — the larger than life football icon of the 2000s. Rivaldo then pegs one back after a dizzying run by Ronaldinho & as the two Barcelona legends combine to restore parity.
By this time, the TV room is full, all the boys are scrambling for a place to sit. The boy manages to convince the teacher that the game is once in a lifetime & it’s got the 2000s’ icons lining up against each other. The teacher postpones class by half an hour so the interested boys can watch the game.
Ronaldinho’s freak free-kick nestles into David Seaman’s net & half the room is in disbelief. After the goal Ronaldinho gets a straight red & gets sent off.
Welcome to the world of football lads!
In case you’re wondering, the young boy was me. And it’s one of my earliest memories of experiencing the drama of football as a young boy while attending school at St. Mary’s ICSE, Mumbai. I had watched parts of the 1998 World Cup, including the final where Zidane scored a brace heading France to glory. But 2002–03 was the season when I started watching & following football & my boyhood club Chelsea FC.
A Look At The Top 10 Goal Scorers In The Premier League — Where Are The Strikers?
Fast forward to 2024, and it’s the monsoon again in Mumbai, the Euros are a couple of days away, but I found some time to analyse a bit of last season. Looking back on the 2023–24 season albeit being one to forget for Chelsea one particular detail caught my eye — Where’s the proper no. 9? Where are the no.9s we used to see so often in the 2000s?
There’s a lot of stats out there these days — the football data revolution et al. I’m not one to criticise stats very vehemently having studied football data analytics, but casting a glimpse into the stats for this past season & the player roles on the pitch, & it’s become largely apparent that the classic 9 who is on the pitch with the primary role to score goals is a dying breed.
Out of the top 10 scorers of this past Premier League season only four of the top 10 are recognized out & out no 9s. Erling Haaland(27 goals), Alexander Isak(21 goals), Ollie Watkins (19 goals), and Dominic Solanke (19 goals). Solanke has had one good season out of the blue after a series of underwhelming seasons but out of the four, only Haaland and Isak are U25. Watkins is 28 & Solanke is 26.
The other six in the list of top scorers are all inside forwards or in Cole Palmer’s case a no. 10. The usual suspects Mo Salah (18) & Heung Min-Son(17) feature too alongside Jarrod Bowen(16) & Phil Foden(19).
Just five seasons ago, in the 2020–2021 season, again the top scorers list in the Premier League had only 50% of the top 10 as recognized no.9s namely Harry Kane, Patrick Bamford, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Jamie Vardy & Ollie Watkins. Lacazette, well, he was a striker but it wasn’t uncommon to see him play out wide.
This trend has been rising ever since the turn of the past decade, the reason I wanted to highlight the 2020/21 season is because two decades before that, the scene was entirely different. To understand how much this trend has evolved have a look at the 2001/02 season’s scoring charts…
Every single name on that list is an out & out 9. But the modern game has undergone some stark changes. The most apparent being the shift from a striker partnership up front to a solitary lone striker. But there’s more…
The Change Of Football Philosophy
In the late 90s and early 2000s it wasn’t uncommon to see a strike partnership up front lining up in a 4–4–2. Eidur Gudjohnsen & Jimmy Floyd-Hasslebaink at Chelsea, Thierry Henry & Dennis Bergkamp for Arsenal, Andy Cole & Ole Gunnar Solskjaer or Ruud Van Nistelrooy at Manchester United or Michael Owen & Robbie Fowler for Liverpool.
The game was much more direct, & there wasn’t a need for possession based styles of play or having extra bodies in midfield. It was all about quick transition & hitting opponents with speed & accuracy. At the top of the pitch were strikers who were natural goalscorers & their primary job was (and still is) to put the ball in the back of the net.
However, two decades on since the millenium & another four years since the 2020/21 season, we’re seeing this shift morph into a much wider philosophy.
For the modern striker, it’s about build up, it’s about bringing the wide players & midfielders into the game, it’s about dropping deep & creating space or being more involved in the possession-based philosophies we’re much accustomed to watching these days.
The lone striker & false nine system has rendered the classic 9 as nearly obsolete. And we’re seeing this across Europe.
I touched upon how data was bringing the end of the classic no.10 in an old article. That was about how the genius of 10s, those masterful touches, runs dribbling past three or four players, those perfect through passes & playmaking ability & moments of magic was being lost in the constant need for G+A.
But when it comes to strikers, I may be a bit of a purist, but strikers should score goals — that’s their main objective. Everything else, well, you can toss that sh*te aside. Where would a Ronaldo Nazario, Raul or Filippo Inzaghi fit into the modern game?
The modern game is beginning to lack the goal scoring poachers & finishers we’ve seen in the past & strike partnerships almost seem like another life ago. The game today is losing players of this profile rapidly, & it’s stemming from the philosophy not just at the very top level but also in the grassroots level in academies.
Instead of the long direct ball & quick counter attack in transition, we’re seeing more coaches apply playing out from the back, slow build up, possession-based philosophies & more work on the ball than off it.
Instead of instructing strikers to make consistent runs behind the backline beat the offside trap & score, we’re seeing coaches want young players to be better with the ball, be part of build-up, drop deep, bring teammates into play, create space etc.
While this has resulted in more technical players & forwards who are exceptional on the ball, the art of putting it in the back of the net & the coaching of strikers to hone their finishing & goal scoring instincts is taking a bit of a back seat.
Position specific coaching is fading & blurring into universality & the player role of the striker has taken a huge hit.
Arsene Wenger foresaw this a decade ago in 2014 & 2015 in two separate interviews where he addressed this issue.
In 2015, speaking to ESPN the former Gunners manager said:
“What we produce now are good technical players because there are nice pitches out there. Before [as a youngster] you played in the park where you had to kick the ball up front and you had to fight, a boy of 12 who played against a boy of 16 had to be shrewd and push to get the ball.
“All those kind of things have gone,”
“What I am convinced of is that in the academies we have to specialise the players.”
“There is an age from five to 12 where you have the acquisition of the technical areas, then at 12 to 14 you start to develop the speed and physical qualities, but from 14 onwards, when you start to position the players for their careers, maybe you have to work on a specific aspect of a position again, what we got naturally before in the street or in the park.”
“Maybe we have to rethink completely the education and specialise earlier.”
While n a 2014 interview, the former Arsenal boss said:
“If you look across Europe, South America is the only continent that develops strikers,” “At least 80 percent of the strikers across Europe are South American. If you look at the 1960s and 1970s in England — even when I arrived [at Arsenal] in 1996 — in every club you had strikers, and I mean [actual] strikers: who headed the ball, who were present on every cross. We have less now. Germany went to the World Cup with [Miroslav] Klose, who is 36.”
“We are much more protected than we were 30 years ago. We have all changed. We have all become a bit softer. [The South Americans] played street football, park football, football with friends. [For them], outside training [with their clubs], there was football as well.
“Maybe in our history, street football has gone. In street football when you are 10 years old, you play with 15-year-olds, so you have to be shrewd, you have to show that you are good, you have to fight, to win impossible balls. When it is all a bit more formulated, then it is less developing your individual skill, your fighting attitude.”
“We have lost that a little bit in football. We have to ask ourselves, what we can add to our academies [to get it back].”
At the moment, aside from Erling Haaland, I see no out & out world-class U25 no9 from Europe. He’s definitely out there on his own. The only other two U25 9s I can think of i.e. Victor Osimhen, & Victor Boniface both come from Nigeria. Lautaro Martinez of Inter also comes from Argentina.
Where Is The Depth Of Strikers Like In The Past?
From the last batch of proper no. 9s, all of them, Harry Kane, Karim Benzema, & Robert Lewandowski, are well into their 30s & those beyond them like the likes of Olivier Giroud & Zlatan Ibrahimovic or Luis Suarez are 40 odd or whatever.
With the Euros coming up I just wanted to highlight the lack of proper strikers taking the field, taking the example of England. Back in the 90s & 2000s England had strikers like Alan Shearer, Robbie Fowler, Michael Owen, Teddy Sheringham, Ian Wright, Les Ferdinand, Andy Cole, Wayne Rooney & let’s just add Emile Heskey in there for a bit of banter.
But now England go into the Euros with only Harry Kane & Ollie Watkins as recognised strikers. Attacking midfielders like Jude Bellingham, and hybrid wide players like Cole Palmer & Phil Foden who are likely to be the attacking trio behind Kane are now entrusted with the task of scoring goals. If this doesn’t highlight the trend in a clearer picture I don’t know what does.
Who Is Going To Have The Ba**s To Play A 4–4–2 Again?
Go ahead, why doesn’t somebody do it? Break the norm. Break the rules. Change the game. Go back to a 4–4–2 hit it long up front let a center forward bring it down & play it to a poacher to score. Let the striker partnership play a quick one-two & hit the back of the net. Let the full backs hit the no 9 in the box with incessant crosses from the full backs & the ghost of David Beckham.
It’s going to take some ba**s & cojones, but I’d really like to see a flat 4–4–2 or a 4–4–2 diamond with some proper strikers on show.
This might seem like a pipe dream, & I may be going in the complete opposite direction, something I like to do, even in my film scoring, which I’ve spoken about here below…
But it’s about time the Guardiolistas of the world, romancing their bald Catalan high-priest & his every move or statement, ditch the fanatical build up bullsh*t & play some proper football like I’ve seen or played growing up.
Save Me The Build-Up Bullsh*t & Give Me The Goals
It’s time for a hard rethink; especially on how the game is evolving & progressing & how we’re coaching & training our youth.
The lone striker & false nine system has worked. But it’s time for football managers to look back to the old ways & mix things up a bit. Everything is getting too stale, like an omlette pav you get in the dying embers of 3 am on the street in Mumbai.
But I’d like to see some teams go more direct & play a mix of possession & direct counter attacking football. It’s not too farfetched, & it could certainly shake things up in the Premier League & across Europe.
But the truth of the matter is, we need more number 9s & we need some changes made across the spectrum.
The Euros are approaching, in fact it’s just a couple of nights away & it’ll be interesting to see how teams deploy their attack. I for one, will be keenly keeping an eye out on the strikers & watching & analysing a bit of the Euros as time permits.
Here’s a bit of some good ol’ 4–4–2 with Gudjohnsen & Hasslebaink & my favourite poacher of all time Pippo Inzaghi.
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