Tactics: Defensive Forwards

The Question: Are defensive forwards the future?

Barcelona, Manchester United and Liverpool are among the teams to have realised that attacking players must be prepared to function in less glamorous ways

Leo Messi and Thierry Henry celebrate Barcelona's second goal against Manchester United. Photograph: Jasper Juinen/Getty Images

Amid all the praise for the way Barcelona maintained possession againstManchester United in the Champions League final, one comment from their manager, Pep Guardiola, tended to be overlooked. "Without the ball," he said, "we are a horrible team. We need the ball, so we pressed high up the pitch to win the ball back early."

From a Barcelona manager, perhaps that isn't so surprising. After all, since Rinus Michels took charge there in 1971, they have favoured the classical Dutch model, which demanded pressing and an aggressive offside trap. "When I went to Barcelona," remembers Marinho Peres, the Brazilian defender who joined the club in 1974, "Michels wanted the centre-backs to push out to make the offside line. In Brazil this was known as the donkey line: people thought it was stupid. The theory was that if you passed one defender, you passed all the others.

"But what Cruyff said to me was that Holland could not play Brazilians or Argentinians, who were very skilful, on a huge pitch. The Dutch players wanted to reduce the space and put everybody in a thin band. The whole logic of the offside trap comes from squeezing the game. This was a brand new thing for me. In Brazil, people thought you could chip the ball over and somebody could run through and beat the offside trap, but it's not like that because you don't have time."

Arrigo Sacchi, whose philosophy was developed from Total Football, believed that a side pressing would ideally allow only 25 metres between centre-forward and centre-back, but such a thin band seems impossible under the liberal modern interpretation of the offside law, which is one of the reasons that it has become increasingly common for sides to play in four bands instead of three. (In fact, it could be argued that one of the reasons that United were so outplayed was that Barcelona's system was discernibly a 4-1-2-3, while United, perhaps because of the absence of Darren Fletcher, perhaps because of Anderson's indiscipline, were stuck in a far more rigid 4-3-3. Given rough equality of talent in that midfield area, a triangle will always beat a line.)

What Barcelona achieved, in other words, was to find a way of pursuing the classic tenets of Total Football – short passing, intermovement of players, winning the ball high up the field – under the modern interpretation of the laws. Their solution, in truth, is not especially complex. Certainly it does not require the intellectual leap of faith Marinho found he needed to accept the efficacy of aggressive offside.

If defenders cannot move forward to defend high up the field because the weakened offside law makes them reluctant to leave space behind them, then logically forwards, when they do not have the ball, act as defenders. This is nothing particularly new – Andriy Shevchenko's ability to defend, for instance, was one of the things that made Valeriy Lobanovskyi hail him as the first "universal player" – but what is surprising is the extent to which Barcelona's forwards are deployed as ball-winners.

To traditionalists who prefer to think of forwards as fragile artists who should not be troubled by such negative thoughts that may be unpalatable – Jimmy Greaves always thought a forward should run as little as possible to ensure he was fresh to pounce when chances arose - but the statistics are telling.

For Barcelona Dani Alves stands alone, having committed twice as many fouls as anybody else in the back four last season, but Opta stats show that Thierry Henry committed more fouls than any other member of the back four, with Gerard Piqué only one ahead of Samuel Eto'o, and Leo Messi and the other regular defenders within one foul of each other. Given none are the sort of players usually thought of as dirty, and they are not the Kevin Davies or Niall Quinn sort of target-man forward who concedes a lot of free-kicks simply because they challenge for a lot of headers, that surely is significant.

Barcelona, because of their reputation for beautiful football, are perhaps the most striking example, but they are certainly not alone. It is not stretching things by much to draw a parallel with table football where, beyond a certain level, most of the play is made by the back two, because they have secure space behind them and so can tee up shots, while the front bands of five and three are left to block or to pounce on loose balls.

Full-back has become the most tactically interesting position on the pitchbecause full-backs, as Jack Charlton noted in 1994, tended to be the only players on the field who regularly had space in from of them. Logically, the next step was to close that down, which means forwards, and particularly wide forwards, taking defensive responsibility.

Manchester United tend to use Park Ji-sung as a defensive winger, as he did most notably against Internazionale when he almost entirely negated the attacking threat of Maicon from full-back. Indeed given his lack of obvious creative abilities, his deployment against Sylvinho, who had barely played for two years and who looked nervous early on, was one of the more mystifying elements of the Champions League final.

But Wayne Rooney too has been used defensively. Even within the scope of that final, it was evident in Carles Puyol's surges from full-back in the second half – one of which led to the second goal - just how Rooney had restricted him before switching flanks at half-time. There are those who would argue that Rooney would be better served operating centrally, as a purely creative presence, but that is to ignore both how many goals are scored from wide these days, and also how good Rooney is as a defensive player. Defenders are often spoken of as being frustrated forwards, but Rooney at times gives the impression of being a frustrated left-back, forever chafing at the restrictions of creativity, desperate to go and get involved in a bit of jockeying.

The surges of Aly Cissokho from left-back had troubled United in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final against Porto, so in the second leg, Sir Alex Ferguson played Cristiano Ronaldo as a centre-forward, with Rooney on the right. Cissokho and Porto were negated, and United completed a relatively comfortable 1-0 victory. Similarly last season, in the semi-final away to Barcelona, Rooney became almost a second full-back, neutralising Messi.

Ronaldo's 42 goals last season meant he was almost universally hailed as United's outstanding player, but consider this curiosity: in Premier League games Ronaldo started last season, Manchester United picked up 2.38 points per game; when Tevez started they picked up 2.44; when Rooney started they picked up 2.52. That's only one measure, and it's fairly crude, but it does hint at how much important work goes unseen. It may be more thrilling to see Rooney employed in a central role, but it is not necessarily more effective. Indeed, it is tribute to his selflessness that he is prepared to function in less glamorous ways.

At Liverpool, similarly, Dirk Kuyt has become adept in the role, harrying and pestering his full-back. Given Steven Gerrard seems certain to continue at the centre of their 4-2-3-1, it is easy to understand why Rafa Benítez might be tempted to bring in Carlos Tevez. Not only would he offer a second central striking option, but playing on the left he would give Liverpool a formidable line of three creative players, all of whom work exceptionally hard, and all of whom are prepared to do their share of defending.

Of course the corollary to defensive forwards is that more defensive players must learn to create. The deep-lying play-making of Falcao and Cerezo for Brazil in the 1982 World Cup, it could be argued, wasfacilitated by the defensive work of the centre-forward Serginho. More recently, Shevchenko helped drive back the opposition defence to create room for Andrea Pirlo's successful reinvention as a deep regista (central midfield playmaker, literally 'director'). In the Premier League we have seen Michael Carrick and Xabi Alonso offer interpretations of the same role. Would Xavi or Andrés Iniesta be quite so effective without three forwards who tackle in front of them?

Lobanovskyi evangelised universality, foreseeing an age when players could interchange at will, and it is perhaps towards that that we are heading. Yet that process seems, paradoxically, to be leading to greater specialisms, perhaps even inversions – in Park's case in particular. Some defenders have always been selected with their creative qualities in mind; now we are seeing the rise of the defensive forward.