In football history, it is very interesting to discover that some clubs were in difficulty winning domestic league titles but on the contrary won the tournaments titles a lot. For example, Liverpool won the Champions League in 2005, but did not finish in a Champions League qualification place in the Premier League that season. In 2012, Chelsea won Champions league with a poor run of form in the domestic season, finished 6th. How to explain this phenomenon?
Why some clubs succeed in major tournaments but fail at domestic leagues?
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Experts of last DAILY TOPIC: What's the least important position in football?
As a football fan I will say there isn’t such a position but if I am just a person who wants results, then the least important position is the striker/center forward position or fullbacks in any formation. I remember I watched a video on Youtube where it states that most footballers who play as a Goalkeeper in their career will want to be a striker instead if they can pick a new position for their career. The reason for that is if you play as a striker, you can disappear 89 minutes of the game but if you score in the 90th minute, you are the hero. This is partly the reason why I think striker are one of the least important position.
well, as a football fan I will say there isn’t such a position but if I am just a person who wants results, then the least important position is the striker/center forward position or fullbacks in any formation. I remember watching a video on Youtube where it was made clear that most footballers who play as a Goalkeeper in their current career will want to be a striker instead, if they can pick a new position for their career. The reason for that is quite obvious, because if you play as a striker, you can disappear 89 minutes of the game but funny enough, if you score in the 90th minute, you are the hero. This is partly, to an extent, the reason why I think strikers are one of the least important individuals on the field of play.
In the game nowadays, there are mainly 2 types of matches, knockout games which goes all the way until a winner is found and another is a solid 90 minutes game, in which its result determine the amount of points a club ends up gathering in their respective tier/group/league table. In a more logical perspective, scoring goals does not guarantee victory and in fact, we always see teams got outscored by opposition due to their lack of defense. Liverpool is a good example, if we define the role of a striker as primarily scoring goals, even if he does a really good job, it is not as useful as keeping a clean sheet because a clean sheet guarantees a point or not conceding any goals in the game until penalty (where either side have an equal chance to win) whereas scoring more goals is still dependent on the midfield and defense to help a club hold onto the lead.
In a tactical point of view, we see tactics such as false 9 employed in teams like Germany and Barcelona. What happens in these formation is that the head coach/manager uses a midfielder to fill the role of the striker meaning they don’t actually play strikers. If you look at the development of different tactics that are coming into the limelight currently,and compare the roles of different position, one can find proofs that the amount of strikers being used, are dropping to some extent,which in a way show that strikers are relatively not as important when compared to other positions.
now, one could speak in favour of a striker, A little defending on the role of the striker. If we use Liverpool for example, their top scorer at the moment is Mohamed Salah who is a winger and this kind of show that the role of scoring goals can be given to wingers which, in my opinion, makes seems like making striker less important. The three forwards Liverpool use are Mane, Firmino and Salah where Firmino plays as the central striker. Firmino was a Center Attacking Midfielder when he played in Hoffenheim and Jurgen Klopp still plays him as a striker. In my perspective, this means that the striker position itself is still significant but it is the role itself that is being redefined. The striker position seems to be the least important,but only if the player who plays it, plays it in a one dimensional manner,that is,in a straight forward line,but if he contributes to different phases of the game,then, the striker position can be seen as the most important, especially if they are scoring goals at an exponential ratio,if they are goal machines.
Another answer for this question could be wing-backs. We can see that there are formations developed like 3–4–3 (GK CB CB CB LM CM CM RM LW ST RW) which does not really play wing-backs, which can be very lethal if used properly by football clubs, like Juventus, who triumphed in Serie A last season.Unless you have players like Alex Sandro, Dani Alves, Carvajal or Marcelo, fullbacks are usually there to counter the attacking threat of wingers but the thing is that these threats can be dealt with by various tactical approach. These formations exist really because it depends on what players you have at your disposal, and how good they are, that will decide what formation is suitable for a team to play with.
