Last season, for the first time in the 50-year history of the PFA Team of the Season, England’s top-flight footballers selected no left-back in their best XI. Kieran Trippier was the sole full-back, alongside John Stones, Ruben Dias and William Saliba.
This season, it’s equally tough to find a suitable candidate. This is partly because Andy Robertson, Luke Shaw and Ben Chilwell have started 15, 12 and nine league games respectively because of injury, but also because the title contenders Arsenal and Manchester City are using awkward-looking players in that role.
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If you want a proper left-back who has started more than half of the games this season, you’re looking at Lucas Digne, Antonee Robinson or Destiny Udogie — all good left-backs, but hardly world class.
There are circumstantial reasons for the dearth of quality left-backs — but there also might be a pipeline problem.
The desirability of the role of full-back was best summarised by Jamie Carragher trying to wind up his co-panellist on Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football in 2013. “No one wants to grow up and be Gary Neville,” he said. It was a jibe but also a serious point. Historically, full-backs were one of two things: converted centre-backs or converted wingers.
Almost every player who becomes a top-level Premier League footballer was the best player, or very close to it, in their youth team — and very few teams field their best footballer at full-back. They’re central midfielders or, if they score goals, they’re strikers. If they’re small and quick, they’re wingers. If they’re strong and commanding, they’re centre-backs. But think back to your own youth team, or school team, and think of your side’s best player. Were they a full-back? Almost certainly not.
But senior sides need to find full-backs from somewhere, and often that involves repurposing a talented youth footballer. Trent Alexander-Arnold, for example, is open about the fact his switch to right-back was a very deliberate move, after discussions with Liverpool’s coaching staff, who reckoned they were well-stocked in midfield, but had a vacancy at right-back.
In the 20th century, when playing full-back was considered a largely defensive task, they were usually centre-backs moved out wide — Neville being an obvious example. When full-backs were expected to attack more, they were usually wingers who had been brought back. It was a relatively simple shift. Those players had to learn how to be dominant in one-against-one situations, and how to defend the far post. But the more attack-minded full-backs became, the more they were running down the line and crossing; essentially, the job wingers once did.
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Take, for example, Wayne Bridge, who emerged around the turn of the century. He was a centre-forward in Southampton’s reserve side, then received some first-team opportunities on the left wing, but eventually became a regular left-back. His peak years for Chelsea and England were spent as a backup to Ashley Cole, who was a striker in Arsenal’s youth team and admitted he was disappointed when converted to a full-back. It was a familiar pattern.
And once attacking full-backs were so comfortable overlapping that they became like wingers, there was no need for wingers to fulfil the same role.
The rise of inverted wingers from 2010 meant many established wingers switched to the opposite flank — see Damien Duff playing from the right and Simon Davies from the left when Fulham reached the Europa League final that year.
This is now the default template, and youngsters growing up automatically see their best position as on the opposite side to their strongest foot. England once had a left-sided problem because they didn’t have any left-footers of the requisite quality. Now they have a left-sided problem because all their best wide options — Bukayo Saka, Cole Palmer, Phil Foden — are left-footed and therefore play from the right.
This creates a problem when converting full-backs, who are still expected to play on the flank corresponding to their preferred foot. The switch from right-winger to left-back is considerably more dramatic than the switch from left-winger to left-back. Once, managers simply had to convince players they would be doing the same thing, running and crossing, just from a deeper starting position. It’s more difficult to convince a player who has grown up cutting inside and shooting, a la Arjen Robben, that they need to completely change their game.
It has sometimes been suggested that Saka, who had a spell playing as an attacking left-back in Mikel Arteta’s early days as manager, could solve that problem position for England, but it seems unlikely — it’s just too big a switch from what he’s doing. If this was a couple of decades ago, and Saka was playing as a left-winger for Arsenal rather than on the right, it might not have been such a problem.
So how about converting centre-backs into full-backs, then? After all, defenders are increasingly picked for their ability in possession and their mobility. Ben White, for example, has adjusted to being moved to right-back commendably, having previously performed solidly at centre-back.
That works on the right. But the problem for left-backs is two-fold. First, and most obviously, left-footers are rarer than right-footers, so there will be fewer candidates to move out to that side. The second — and more modern — problem is that there’s a greater demand for a side’s left-sided centre-back to be left-footed, and therefore comfortable in build-up play. They don’t need to be left-footed — Virgil van Dijk is right-footed, plays to the left and is an excellent passer — but there are good reasons for having a left-footed left-centre-back; more so than when goal kicks were routinely thumped over defenders’ heads and towards a big target man up front. Lisandro Martinez, for example, might have been converted to a full-back in the past — he’s only 5ft 9in (175cm) and left-footed. In the modern era, though, he’s clearly a centre-back.
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Left-backs are less likely to be former wingers, as the shift has become harder. They’re less likely to be former centre-backs, too, because coaches will be more reluctant to move them from that position. The lack of top-class left-backs, then, is probably no coincidence.
(Top photo: Getty Images)
