Phil Ball: Full-backs proving to be key figures in La Liga

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  • Most impressive full-backs in La Liga.

    Barcelona are in a bit of a pickle because PSG have tempted 31-year-old Dani Alves with a fistful of euros (9 million a season) and a three-year contract which would see the player disappear happily over the horizon and finance his retirement (and that of his agent) very nicely thank you. 

    He can then develop a new career as a rapper, a fashion guru or a social commentator – take your pick.

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    Meanwhile, his current club Barcelona have suddenly realised that they are banned from signing any new players this summer and remain underwhelmed with either Martin Montoya and Douglas as potential successors to the great Alves.

    This week saw club President Josep María Bartomeu re-igniting talks with the Brazilian full-back, who admitted to the press that he wanted to stay, but that the offer had to be ‘real’.

    Alves feels that his past contribution to the club merits the reward of a better contract than the one-year roll-over deal currently on offer to him. Dani’s a faithful guy. When he left Sevilla after six seasons, he wept in a genuine way that suggested that he was no mercenary. A complex and kind chap, he expects others to reciprocate. 

    Bartomeu (or those more qualified to know) has realised the mistake too late, especially since he himself might not be around for much longer, if the latest judicial petition for nine years imprisonment prospers. It’s tempting to wonder if during their one-to-one meeting last week Dani Alves had difficulty in keeping the image out of his mind of Bartomeu in striped prison pyjamas. 

    However, I don’t want to talk exclusively about Alves this week, but rather about the breed that he represents, the full-back. There is an uncanny amount of good ones in La Liga, of which Alves, although now in decline, is a prime example. 

    And the fact that Real Madrid have lost Luka Modric and Gareth Bale to injury for this week’s second leg of their Champions League derby seems less significant, from the perspective of my keyboard anyway, to the loss of the left-back Marcelo, currently the best player in the entire Spanish league. 

    Best player you say? It seems a strange phrase to attribute to a full-back, but such is the reality of the modern game. 

    It’s still a relatively unglamorous position, and only a small elite of players who ply their trade there will ever command transfer fees of €30 million and over. Alves, who moved from Sevilla to Barcelona at a time when he was utterly sensational, managed to command a fee of 35m euros. It remains the third most expensive move ever for a full-back, with Man Utd’s Luke Shaw still at the top of the tree (€37m and hardly playing) and Lilian Thuram in second place.

    Quite why Real Madrid have felt the need to splash out €32m on Danilo, making him the 4th most expensive example, only time will inform us. Alvaro Arbeloa looks to be on his way out, although he’s hardly a poor player, and Dani Carvajal seems to be one of the club’s success stories this year.  

    During my own fairly undistinguished midfield playing days, our right-back was badly injured during a game and the coach moved me back, as an emergency policy. I was merely the best of a bad bunch of alternatives.  But I remember the day well. I can remember the weather, the pitch, and the colours of the opposition (yellow and black stripes). 

    Slotting into the position was a weird experience. You can manage to play football for years, but never play full-back. When I was young, it was a position occupied by slightly strange people, slightly obsessive types who not only went against the grain – uninterested in scoring or passing the half-way line – but who were often quiet and uncommunicative, as if they were happy to be isolated out there on their line, guarding their limited but precious territory.

    I never quite understood why anyone would want to play there, and then suddenly, I was standing there, for the first time, watching the action from an entirely different perspective. It was an extraordinary spatial moment. To my right, there was nowhere to go. To my left, a wide diagonal of space I had never noticed before. It terrified me. I was suddenly the castle on the chess board. I hadn’t a clue what to do, but I must have done something ok because the injured player never returned and I stayed as full-back for the rest of the season. 

    After a few games the coach took me aside and asked me if I was happy to stay there. I shrugged an affirmative. He replied ‘Well that’s good, but don’t forget that it’s the most important position on the pitch. Don’t mess me around’. 

    No modern team has ever got anywhere without a decent pair of full-backs. It’s a simple enough thesis to explore, but for now just look at Spain’s top four teams. Alves is not quite the player he was, but he’s still good. At his peak, he almost managed to re-define the post-modern game. He was technically a defender, but he was rarely to be seen in his own half.

    Barcelona’s plethora of players who were able to hold the ball up, to wait for reinforcements, only served to emphasise the best solution to the eternal problem – that football is a game of eleven versus eleven, but that when you are in possession of the ball you are mathematically at a disadvantage. 

    It was Helenio Herrera who famously observed that it was the team without the ball that had more men ‘free’, but it was only several decades later that the full-back became a fundamental element of attack, creating the ‘spare man’ to help get around the problem.   

    Players have to be extraordinarily fit to be this type of full-back. Or fast. Jordi Alba is a good example of the latter, a player who started out as a winger but who was converted to full-back by Unai Emery at Valencia. Not only do these types have to run box-to-box for the entire match, they also have to be able to cross accurately, to anticipate the moment to advance, to hare back home when a counter-attack begins and to establish a working relationship with the midfielder or winger who also occupies their line.

    It can be a problem, as Carlo Ancelotti is finding out. It may be obvious that Gareth Bale is more effective on the left, but whilst Marcelo is over there then Bale cannot squeeze the same space. And you don’t pay 100 million to simply employ a player to act as support for another.

    Bale was also a full-back in his earlier days, until by sheer force of nature he began to be called a ‘winger’ – but such was his offensive dominance of the left side for both Southampton and Tottenham, that no other players were really required in that zone. Winger, full-back, midfielder? The label was irrelevant, as it is now for Marcelo. Bale is not suddenly a poor player, but he is less effective on the right, less effective when surrounded by his own players.

    What he craves is simply his personal space. Meanwhile, Marcelo is Real Madrid’s main creative force.  Without him on Wednesday night, they will suffer. Fabio Coentrao is no slouch, but he rushes and makes poor decisions. He is unable to determine the rhythm of a game, like Marcelo.

    Atlético’s Juanfran is a wonderful full-back too. He looks so pale and frail that he could be starring in Night of the Zombies, and is consequently ignored by the media, but he has been fundamental to Atlético’s rise. He is also less prone to the attacking full-back’s reputation as a dodgy or undisciplined defender, something that both Alves and Marcelo have been accused of. 

    Juanfran understands perfectly the primary defensive virtue of a full-back, namely the spatial relationship you must maintain between yourself and the nearest centre-back. Get it right, and great things will happen. Get it wrong, and your team will collapse. Everything can be undone by this, and I remember how difficult it was to learn, back then as a uncouth youth.  

    At Valencia, Antonio Barragán is enjoying his best season for some time, and although he is a late developer he seems to be joining the ranks of excellent full-backs to emerge from the Mestalla, with Juan Bernat now at Bayern and Jordi Alba and Jeremy Mathieu the most recent exports. José Luis Gaya, who came on for the second half of Valencia’s game at the Camp Nou on Saturday, is also highly rated, and is already being touted as a replacement for Fabio Coentrao, to understudy Marcelo.  

    It seems to prove the point, with Sevilla product Alberto Moreno also emerging as a potential international and enjoying a decent season at Liverpool, not forgetting the excellent Cesar Azpilicueta at Chelsea. Real Sociedad’s Joseba Zaldúa is another one to watch, whilst Mario Gaspar at Villarreal and Ximo Navarro at Almería deserve honorary mentions.

    It’s difficult to think of any other European league that consistently produces (or nurtures) such a plethora of good full-backs, and the consistent dominion of Spanish clubs in the Champions League in the last few years bears witness to the importance of these players in the (post)-modern game.

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