The Question: Are teams getting better at playing with 10 men?
After a host of matches in which 11 have been unable to get the better of 10, is the impact of red cards beginning to diminish?
The idea that it that may be harder to play against 10 men than 11 has been a cliché so long that there's even a Beyond the Fringe sketch about it. It is also palpably untrue. Events at the weekend, when Barcelona, Liverpool and Almería all won despite playing the bulk of the game a man down – along with Manchester United's performance after the dismissal of Nani last night – suggest it may be that playing against 10 men is not as easy as it used to be.
It depends, of course, when you mean by "used to be". Figures produced by Opta and Castrol Performance Analysts suggest the impact of red cards has changed only a little over the past 20 years. In the Premier League between 1992 and 2000, for instance, a side that was drawing when they had a man sent off went on to win the game 11.8% of the time if the red card happened in the first hour, 3.7% if it happened between 60 and 80 minutes, and 4.5% if it happened after 80 minutes. Looking at the top divisions in England, Spain, Italy, Germany and France since the start of 2006-07, those figures are 13.4% for up to an hour, 8.1% for 60-80 minutes and 4.9% for after 80 minutes.
Between 1992 and 2000 in the Premier League, teams losing when they had a man sent off went on to draw or win 11.1% of the time if the red card happened before the hour, 5.9% if it happened between 60 and 80 minutes, and 4.8% if it came after 80 minutes; in the top five European leagues since the start of 2006-07, the figures are 11.5% for a red card in the first hour; 11.4% for a red card between 60 and 80 minutes; and 2.7% for a card after 80 minutes. So there is a slight but distinct trend suggesting having a man sent off is no longer quite such a negative as it was.
More striking, though, is the fact that when Cameroon beat Argentina in the opening game of Italia '90, it was the first time any side had improved their result having had a man sent off in a World Cup game, François Omam Biyik scoring the only goal six minutes after his brother, André Kana Biyik, had been sent off. Benjamin Massing also picked up a red card late on. Eleven days later, Austria had Peter Artner sent off 32 minutes into their group match against the USA with the score at 0-0, but went on to win 2-1. Since then, teams have improved their result (that is, gone from a loss to a draw or win, or gone from a draw to a win) while a man down on a further 10 occasions.
There are, of course, far more red cards in modern football than there used to be, but the figures are still significant. In World Cups before 1990, 37 players were sent off from teams drawing or losing, and none improved their result; since then there have been 80, of which 12 have improved. In the last 20 years, it would seem, a sending-off has had less of an impact than it had in the first 120 years of football's history. Moreover, it appears its impact is continuing to diminish.
What's changed?
There is one obvious and prosaic reason why that trend should be apparent in club football, which is that teams near the top of the league are now so much better than those lower down that they don't need 11 men to beat them. Across Europe the impact of Champions League revenues has been to stretch domestic leagues. The gap between fourth and fourth bottom in the Premier League last season, for instance, was 0.97 points per game (down from a record 1.05 the season before), as opposed to 0.68 in 1998-99.
There is also, though, a greater sophistication to football these days. In 2006, after Chelsea had come from a goal down to beat West Ham 4-1despite having had Maniche sent off after 17 minutes, José Mourinho said that he devoted time in training to playing with 10 men, focusing on ball retention and fewer, more precise attacks.
Arsenal, similarly, at least in the days when they had players sent off on a regular basis (it is now over a year since their last Premier League red card, which is one of those odd statistics for which they ought to be praised, and yet seems somehow indicative of their problems), would practise with a man down.
Related to specific practice with 10 men is the fact that, as football has become increasingly systematised, the effect of losing a player has changed. It's no coincidence that Italy in the 1994 World Cup, when under Arrigo Sacchi they played perhaps the most systematised football ever known at international level, had men sent off while level against Norway and behind against Nigeria, and yet went on to win both matches.
Systems and the 'man over' fallacy
Each game has its specific circumstances, of course, and should probably be assessed accordingly, but in the systematised world of modern football there is a danger that the team with the extra man will over-react and try to force things too much. In the days before zonal marking, when football was essentially a series of one-on-one battles, it was easy to pinpoint the weakness of a team going a man down, and easy to attack that space.
Take, for example, the 1953 FA Cup final, which was decided not because of a sending off but by injury. Bolton led 3-1 with 20 minutes to go, but were hampered by the fact that their left-back, Tommy Banks, had pulled a muscle and the left-half, Eric Bell, had strained a hamstring. Not only were there no substitutes, but there seems to have been no thought that other players could have dropped in to cover them. Stanley Matthews, Blackpool's right-winger, revelled in the freedom, and set up three late goals to win the game.
Under a zonal system, which was being developed in Brazil by Zeze Moreira at around the same time, even without having players switch positions, there would have been more cover, with the centre-half naturally drifting to protect the left-back secure in the knowledge that behind him the right-back would be moving across to cover, the right half dropping to cover him, and so on.
Since football became systematised, the idea that a side playing with 11 against 10 should have a "man over" has been outdated. As Valeriy Lobanovskyi, heavily influenced by the Kyivan cybernetics boom, described it, football in its purest form was "a system of 22 elements – two sub-systems of 11 elements – moving within a defined area [the pitch] and subject to a series of restrictions (the laws of the game). If the two sub-systems were equal, the outcome would be a draw. If one were stronger, it would win."
Take one of the elements from one of the sides, and that sub-system becomes weaker, but without – in Lobanovskyi's pure model – leaving a specific and exploitable weakness. Football, of course, isn't an abstract game and so there remains a difference between losing a centre-back to a red card and losing a right-winger, but it has moved far closer to Lobanovskyi's ideal than Bolton's 1953 naivety.
Ramsey and Ranieri
Unless an obvious weakness is revealed – a centre-back who can't head up against a target-man centre-forward, for instance, or a lumbering full-back against a rapid winger – it may be that the best thing to do when faced with 10 men is to change nothing.
Certainly that was the tactic Alf Ramsey employed in the 1966 World Cup quarter-final. Burned by a 1-0 defeat against Argentina in a friendly in Brazil in 1964, when England had had most of the play but had been undone by a solitary counter, he decided (by the standards of the day) on caution, sitting deep in midfield and waiting for Argentina to make a mistake.
Another manager might have been tempted into a more expansive approach after Argentina's captain, Antonio Rattin, had been sent off after 35 minutes, but not Ramsey. If his game-plan was the right one against a sub-system of 11 men, he seems to have reasoned, it remained the right one when that sub-system had been weakened by the removal of its key element.
He remained unflinching and, sure enough, it was Argentina who blinked. A couple of attacks seem to have encouraged the Argentinians, perhaps even awakened the thought that they should take try to advantage when they had a little momentum and try to get the game done in 90 minutes rather than risk exhaustion in extra-time, and pushing forwards, they fleetingly lost shape.
Even with 11, Argentina's formation was lop-sided, Oscar Mas playing as a left-winger without any equivalent on the right. England, accordingly, tended to attack down their left, where the full-back, Roberto Ferreiro, could be isolated. It was down that flank that the goal came, as Ferreiro needlessly conceded a throw about 40 yards from goal. Ray Wilson took the throw to Alan Ball, accepted the return, and knocked the ball forward for Martin Peters. At last, he had space, and shaped a cross to the near post where Geoff Hurst, making an angled run between Roberto Perfumo and Rafael Albrecht, glanced a header past Antonio Roma.
"The system …," wrote David Miller in the Sunday Telegraph, "is not one to win the crowds even if, as things are going, it still seems to win matches." But about what else did Ramsey care? Throughout his career he treated fans and journalists as little more than nuisances who, with their demand to be entertained, got in the way of the serious business of winning matches. As cold-eyed as any England manager has ever been, he had won the stand-off.
That said, it could be argued that Martin O'Neill adopted a similar policy last night, and he later admitted he wondered whether his side might have taken more risks. That can be a dangerous policy, though, as was shown, for instance, in Chelsea's Champions League semi-final first leg in Monaco in 2004.
Andreas Zikos was sent off seven minutes into the second half with the score at 1-1, at which Chelsea's manager Claudio Ranieri brought on Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink for Mario Melchiot. Perhaps, his departure having been so long foretold, Ranieri felt the need to make a point, to enact a decisive change that would confirm his genius and persuade Roman Abramovich to keep him on.
Squeezed into an uneasy 4-3-3 in which first Robert Huth and then Scott Parker had to play right-back, though, Chelsea lost shape and the width that might have stretched Monaco and opened up gaps. They ended up conceding twice in the final quarter-hour to effectively surrender the tie. "It's my fault," Ranieri said. "With one player more I wanted to win the match. We tried to continue to control the match and tried to do something good, but we lost it in the last 15 minutes. Everybody wanted to do something more, to run with ball and not to combine with the other players." They, in other words, had become individuals, while Monaco remained a system.
Perspective
It may be less of a handicap than it once was, but having a man sent off is still a major disadvantage. Italy's win over Nigeria game remains the only World Cup fixture in which a team, having a man sent off, has come from behind to win. Similarly, since that Chelsea win over West Ham, only once in the Premier League has a team come from behind having had a man sent off (ignoring games with more than one red card): Arsenal's 3-2 win over Bolton in March 2008.
The Castrol statistics show that on more than half the occasions a team in one of Europe's top five leagues has had a player sent off while winning or drawing with more than 10 minutes remaining, their result has worsened. Red cards are still significant, and four cherry-picked results in the past few days don't change that. What is apparent, though, is that those results are part of a wider trend: teams are better at playing with a man down that they used to be.
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