Is Football Becoming a Tactical Battle for Central Spaces?

Divide a football pitch into 18 rectangles, six columns and three rows, and one of those rectangles matters more than all the others. It sits centrally, directly in front of the penalty area, and researchers at Liverpool John Moores University identified it in the late 1990s as the zone from which the most dangerous attacking actions originate. They called it Zone 14. Others call it the Golden Square.

The data behind it is striking. Studies have found that teams are roughly four times more likely to score when passing forward into or out of this central zone than when delivering the ball from wide areas. Passes originating from Zone 14 that reach players inside the box consistently produce the highest expected goals values in analytical models. The phase of possession within this zone typically lasts no longer than eight seconds, but what happens in those seconds disproportionately determines the outcome of matches.

France's Euro 2000-winning side reportedly played 81% of their goal assists through this central corridor. Manchester United's treble winners of 1999 dominated it. Guardiola's Barcelona, with Xavi and Iniesta operating in the space between the opposition's midfield and defensive lines, turned control of Zone 14 into an art form.

But the data only tells half the story. Because every team in professional football now knows Zone 14 exists. Every analyst has identified it. Every defensive coach designs their shape around denying access to it. And this is where the real tactical battle begins.

The Defence's Answer: Force Them Wide

If the most dangerous attacking actions happen centrally, the logical defensive response is to prevent the ball from getting there. Make the centre of the pitch impassable. Crowd it with bodies. Close the passing lanes that lead into it. And funnel the ball towards the one area of the pitch where the attacking team has the fewest options: the touchline.

This is the foundational principle of modern defensive coaching. Whether a team presses high, sits in a mid-block or drops into a deep block, the objective is the same: protect the centre and force play wide.

The touchline is football's silent defender. It cannot be dribbled past. It cannot be played around. When a player receives the ball near the sideline, they can only move in three directions rather than four. Their passing angles are halved. Their time on the ball shrinks because the pressing team can approach from fewer directions while using the line itself to cut off escape routes. A player in the centre of the pitch has 360 degrees of possibility. A player pinned against the touchline has, at best, 180.

This is why pressing traps overwhelmingly target wide areas. The most common structure involves a winger or wide midfielder closing off the inside passing lane with their body shape, a full-back stepping up aggressively to double the press, and a central midfielder sliding across to block the cutback. Three players, forming a triangle, suffocating the ball carrier against the line. The trigger is typically a heavy touch, a backwards pass or a sideways ball played under pressure. The moment the ball reaches the full-back or the winger near the touchline, the trap springs.

Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool perfected this. Ralf Rangnick's RB Leipzig built an entire philosophy around it. Mikel Arteta's Arsenal use it week in, week out. The specifics differ from team to team, but the underlying logic is universal: protect the middle, invite the ball wide, then hunt it down using the touchline as a wall.

FIFA's own coaching curriculum explicitly teaches this principle. Their training sessions on preventing central progression focus on pressing players adopting a side-on body shape that blocks inside options, forcing ball carriers towards the flanks where the sideline narrows their choices. The language is direct: "Use the touchline as an extra defender."

The result is that wide areas have become football's graveyard for possession. Data from Europe's top five leagues shows that the average team attempts around 19 crosses per match, but only about 24% of those crosses reach a teammate. Of the crosses that do find their target, only around half result in a shot. And of those shots, the conversion rate is desperately low. Research has calculated that roughly one in every 64 crosses directly leads to a goal. As a method of creating high-value chances, traditional wide play is statistically one of the least efficient strategies available.

This is the trap that modern defences set. They deny central access, force the ball wide and then dare the attacking team to cross it. Because crossing, for most teams, is not a reliable route to goal. The xG values generated from headed chances off crosses are significantly lower than those from through-balls or cutbacks played centrally. The defenders know it. The data knows it. And increasingly, the attacking coaches know it too.

The Attacker's Counter: Reclaiming the Centre

If defences are designed to push teams wide, the most progressive attacking coaches in the game are now engineering ways to stay central or to get back there as quickly as possible.

This is the thread that connects several of the most interesting tactical developments in the 2025-26 Premier League season. Look at the teams on the best form in the division and you will find a common pattern: wide players who are not wide at all.

Manchester City's resurgence under Guardiola has been built around a dramatic narrowing of their attacking shape. Where City previously used wide players to hold their position and stretch the pitch, Guardiola has recently fielded Phil Foden and Rayan Cherki as drifting playmakers who start nominally wide but operate almost exclusively in central and half-space positions. In matches against Liverpool, Sunderland, Crystal Palace and Leeds, City's shape in possession has resembled something closer to a 4-3-2-1 than a 4-3-3, with two creative players positioned tightly behind Erling Haaland.

At Liverpool, Arne Slot has arrived at something similar, though arguably by necessity rather than design. With Mohamed Salah falling out of favour and Florian Wirtz struggling to influence games from a traditional number 10 role, Slot has moved Wirtz to the left and deployed Dominik Szoboszlai on the right. Neither operates as a conventional wide player. Both drift centrally, creating what Jamie Carragher recently described as "the pentagon" on Sky Sports: five midfield players almost stacked on top of each other, occupying the middle third of the pitch. Look at the passing maps from Liverpool's recent win at Tottenham and you find all five midfielders and striker Hugo Ekitike positioned within the same narrow band of the pitch.

At Aston Villa, Unai Emery has always been sceptical of traditional wingers. His current side features Morgan Rogers and John McGinn in nominally wide positions, but both naturally move inside to shoot with their stronger foot. Rogers' outstanding recent form, which has fuelled debate about his England place as a number 10, has actually come from playing in a wide role that is wide only on paper. In attack, both Rogers and McGinn operate centrally, and both of Villa's goals in their recent win over Manchester United came from central combinations between the two.

The pattern is clear: three of the Premier League's form sides are all playing with "wide players" who spend most of their time in central positions. The wide zones have become starting points, not destinations.

Half-Spaces: The Compromise Zone

The evolution has not been a simple case of abandoning width entirely. The smartest coaches have identified that there is an area of the pitch that offers most of the advantages of central play without the congestion that makes Zone 14 so difficult to access. These are the half-spaces.

If you divide the pitch into five vertical channels (left wing, left half-space, centre, right half-space, right wing), the half-spaces are the corridors that sit between the wide areas and the central lane. In German coaching, they are called the Halbraum. Guardiola has his training pitch marked with these five channels, and his positional rules govern how many players can occupy each one at any given time.

The half-spaces are valuable because they offer a blend of centrality and space. The central channel is the most dangerous area of the pitch, but it is also the most congested: defenders know to protect it, and pressing structures are built to deny access to it. The wide channels offer space but are far from goal and limited by the touchline. The half-spaces sit between these extremes. A player receiving the ball in the half-space has proximity to goal, a clear sight of the penalty area, passing angles in multiple directions and, crucially, more time and space than they would have in the centre.

This is where the modern number 10 has migrated. Players like Kevin De Bruyne, Martin Odegaard, Florian Wirtz and Morgan Rogers are at their most dangerous when receiving in the half-spaces rather than directly in front of the defence. From these positions, they can play through-balls into the box, switch play to the opposite flank, combine with the striker or shoot. The defenders are forced into impossible decisions: does the centre-back step out to press, leaving a gap in the defensive line? Does the full-back tuck in, leaving the wide channel open for an overlapping runner? The half-space creates ambiguity, and ambiguity is the attacking team's greatest weapon.

Research supports this. Analysis by Coaches' Voice and others has found that for every 25 passes that break the midfield line and find a forward-facing player between the lines, roughly 10 result in a shot on goal. That is a 40% conversion rate from pass to shot, a figure that dwarfs the efficiency of crossing from wide positions. The half-spaces are the gateway to these opportunities.

The Arms Race: Central Overloads vs Compact Blocks

The tactical battle for central spaces has created an escalating arms race between attacking innovation and defensive organisation.

On one side, attacking coaches are finding ever more creative ways to overload the middle of the pitch. Inverted wingers cut inside from the flanks, adding bodies to central areas and creating numerical advantages. Inverted full-backs step into midfield rather than overlapping on the wing, adding another central presence. Number eights make late runs from deep, arriving in the half-spaces at speed and making them almost impossible to track. False nines drop from the striker position into the space between the lines, pulling centre-backs forward and creating gaps for others to exploit.

The number of conventional touchline-hugging wingers starting Premier League matches has dropped noticeably this season. Most teams now field at least one inverted wide player, and many field two. The logic is simple: if the most dangerous areas of the pitch are central, why would you station your most creative players on the margins?

On the other side, defences have responded by becoming ever more compact. Low blocks and mid-blocks pack the central lane with bodies, sometimes creating a wall of six or seven players across a 30-yard stretch. Defensive midfielders are drilled to protect the space directly in front of the centre-backs, using cover shadows to block passing lanes into the half-spaces. Centre-backs stay narrow, trusting that forcing play wide is safer than stepping out to press and leaving gaps behind them. Some teams have moved to a back five specifically to plug the gap between centre-back and full-back that half-space play exploits.

The result is a tactical game of chess. Attacking teams try to find the gaps in the central wall. Defending teams try to make those gaps disappear. And the quality of the athletes matters enormously: the margins between accessing Zone 14 and being forced wide are measured in fractions of a second and a few yards of space. The players who thrive in these environments, De Bruyne, Odegaard, Wirtz, Rogers, Foden, are defined by their ability to receive under pressure, turn quickly and make the right decision in the smallest pockets of space.

The Death of the Traditional Cross?

None of this means that wide play is dead. Width remains essential to football for a simple reason: without it, the defending team can squeeze the pitch into a narrow strip and make central access impossible. Someone needs to hold the width to prevent the defence from collapsing inward.

But the purpose of width has changed. In the traditional model, the winger's job was to get to the byline and cross the ball into the box. In the modern model, the wide player's primary function is often to hold their position as a decoy, stretching the defence and creating the space centrally that the real attackers exploit. The width is the means, not the end.

When wide play does produce goals, it increasingly comes through cutbacks and low passes rather than traditional crosses. A ball played back from the byline into the area in front of the six-yard box generates significantly higher xG than a lofted cross that arrives in the air. The cutback allows the receiver to shoot with the ball on the ground, facing the goal, with a clear view of the target. The traditional cross asks the receiver to score a header or a volley, often while moving away from goal, often under pressure from a defender who has the advantage of facing the ball.

The tactical implications for coaches are profound. If your team's attacking plan culminates in a traditional cross into the box, you are choosing one of the lowest-probability routes to goal. If your plan culminates in central penetration, through-balls into the box from the half-spaces, or cutbacks from wide positions, you are operating in the areas where the data says goals are most likely to come from.

What the 4-2-3-1 Was Always Supposed to Be

One reading of this tactical shift is that it represents something genuinely new: a radical departure from how football has been played for the past two decades. But another reading, perhaps a more accurate one, is that this is actually a return to what certain formations were always intended to look like.

The 4-2-3-1 became the dominant formation in European football during the 2000s. Two deeper midfielders, a number 10 behind the striker, and two wide players. But over time, the "wide players" in many 4-2-3-1 systems drifted further and further towards the touchline, becoming, in effect, traditional wingers. The formation that was originally designed to pack three creative players behind the striker became a system with a number 10 and two wide men.

What Liverpool, Manchester City and Aston Villa are doing now might simply be a return to the formation's original intent: three attacking midfielders positioned tightly behind the striker, occupying central and half-space positions, operating as a compact creative unit rather than stretching themselves across the width of the pitch. The trio behind the striker were always supposed to be a tighter unit, three number 10s spread narrowly across the pitch rather than two wingers and a playmaker.

In that sense, this is less a tactical revolution than a tactical correction. The game moved wide. The data said the danger was central. The best coaches are moving back.

Coaching Takeaways

The battle for central spaces carries practical lessons for coaches working at every level.

In attack, the priority should be accessing central and half-space positions. This does not mean ignoring width, but it means recognising that width is a tool for creating central opportunities, not an end in itself. If your wide players are delivering crosses and nothing else, you are operating in the least efficient zone of the pitch. Train your players to receive between the lines, to play forward passes into the box from central positions, and to use cutbacks rather than lofted crosses whenever possible.

In defence, the principle is the inverse: deny central access and force the ball wide. Train pressing structures that use the touchline as an extra defender. Drill cover shadows that block inside passing lanes. Build your shape around protecting the central channel and the half-spaces, and trust that wide possession is less dangerous than central possession. The pressing trap, closing off the inside and springing pressure once the ball reaches the flank, is one of the most effective defensive patterns available.

In recruitment, this battle should inform your player profiles. Wide players who can only operate on the touchline are becoming less valuable. Wide players who can receive between the lines, play combination passes in tight spaces and drift into half-space positions are becoming more valuable. The same applies to full-backs: a full-back who can only overlap and cross is less useful than one who can invert and contribute to central build-up.

In match preparation, map where the opposition creates their chances and where they are vulnerable. If they rely on crossing, you can afford to force them wide and defend the box. If they penetrate centrally, you need to compress the middle and accept the risk of width. The tactical battle for central spaces is context-specific, and the best coaches adapt their approach game by game.

The pitch is 68 metres wide, but the 20 metres in the middle of it are where most matches are decided. Every tactical innovation in the modern game, from inverted full-backs to inverted wingers to the death of the traditional number 10, can be traced back to this simple truth: the centre of the pitch is where goals come from. The only question is whether you can get there before the opposition stops you.