How full-backs evolved from utility men to become key players

There’s an old joke that feels particularly relevant these days as football tactics continue to evolve. Full-backs, it goes, are simply failed strikers.

To get to the heart of why that joke works requires going back into the sport’s history, to an age well before anyone understood the modern definition of full-backs. In particular, we need to find out how one of the most demanding positions in football began shifting its balance.

Since around about the middle of the 20th century, full-backs have found themselves caught between two worlds — neatly divided between defending and attacking.

Back in the sport’s early days, “full-backs” were simply the widest most of a group of attackers devoted to forcing the issue in the opposition’s half. As teams gradually began to see some value in keeping men behind the ball, these wingers got pushed further and further back until they could easily be lumped in with centre-backs under a single word: “defender”.

Which isn’t to take the luster off of full-backs in decades past. While the position was and continues to often be occupied by utility men, it has its fair share of luminaries. The 1970 World Cup perhaps provides the best examples. Brazil and Italy both leaned heavily on legendary full-backs, Carlos Alberto and Giacinto Facchetti respectively, to help them reach the final in Mexico City.

For the most part though, no team ever found itself defined by its full-backs. They served a vital function, yes, but not so central as to eclipse the contributions of a striker, playmaker or goalkeeper. Those are the players that break transfer records and get honored with awards year in and year out.

Being a full-back was, essentially, yeoman’s work. Just do what you have to to not stand out and avoid mistakes.

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That all began to change as two trends intersected at the beginning of the 21st century.

First, wingers gradually began to diminish in tactical importance. No longer could teams count on a Garrincha or a George Best to boss a match. That was, in part, the direct result of the formalization of the full-back role into one more defender than attacker. With a man set aside exclusively to defend the flanks, wingers suddenly didn’t have the space they needed to thrive.

Two, Barcelona’s tiki taka grew from seeds planted years before by Johan Cruyff and the Netherland’s Total Football. Suddenly it was much harder to draw lines between the different segments of a team. Strikers were also midfielders, midfielders were also defenders and full-backs were also, ironically, proper wingers.

This holistic take on football tactics worked so phenomenally well with Barca that it began inspiring copy cats — if not always in style, then certainly in substance.

Look at almost any team that found success since Barcelona’s 2010 Champions League victory. Juventus, Borussia Dortmund, Atlético Madrid, even Roberto di Matteo’s Chelsea. Each team owed something to the idea that teams can work as well as interconnected, complementary units as galáctico-fueld teams like Real Madrid.

That evolution owed a lot to a new generation of full-back. Far from simply turning in shifts, the modern full-back could become among the most important cogs in a team’s machine.

Look at how crucial Dani Alves was at Barca’s peak. Only Xavi and Andres Iniesta rivaled the Brazilian right-back in terms of assists for Lionel Messi. He was, quite simply, the embodiment of what attacking potential a full-back could have in a modern system.

If no full-back even lived up to Alves’ example, it didn’t stop his contemporaries and successors from trying. Indeed, more and more teams began to construct their game plans around swashbuckling full-backs.