Five years of the ‘new’ goal-kick law – this is how it has transformed football — The Athletic 21/7/24
By Jordan Campbell
It was in the autumn of 2017 when goal kicks first started
to become viewed as a legitimate attacking instrument.
After signing from Benfica, it soon became clear that the
left leg of Manchester City goalkeeper Ederson was more of a trebuchet than a
human limb, capable of striking the ball 80 yards over the top of the
opposition defence to set up goals.
The ploy befuddled teams, as it was something that had not
been seen before. City’s entire front three would position themselves 20 yards
beyond the opposition back line, safe in the knowledge they could not be
offside from a goal kick.
There are an average of 16 goal kicks in a Premier League
match, which makes the scenario the third-most-common set piece behind
throw-ins and free kicks.
Until 2017, however, presumably because geographically in
terms of the pitch they start just about as far from the opposition net as
possible, goal kicks had largely been performed off the cuff and without much
thought, seen as nothing more than a requirement to restart play rather than a
set piece that could be mapped out and used against your opponent.
On most occasions, teams pushed everyone up and the
goalkeeper smashed the ball as far as he could, an act in English football
widely soundtracked by fans behind his goal shouting, “Oooooooooooh…! You’re
s**t! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!” — originally as an attempt to distract the goalkeeper
involved, later as a form of pantomime to amuse themselves.
Then, in summer 2019, IFAB — the body responsible for the
laws of the game — changed the one around goal kicks to state that the ball no
longer had to exit the penalty area of the team taking it before a player could
receive the first pass.
Football has fiddled with the offside rule and VAR has
transformed the spectacle, particularly for those attending games, but the
change to the goal-kick rule is the most radical change to the style of the
sport since the one banning goalkeepers from picking up backpasses was
introduced in the early 1990s.
There were some immediate, albeit expected, changes in behaviour now that the first pass was free to be controlled anywhere inside the penalty area. The number of goal kicks in the Premier League played short has steadily risen and is now more than double the figure in 2018-19, when around three-quarters of them were walloped upfield.
An additional area measuring 44 yards by 18 yards in which
to receive the ball may not seem transformative, but in the past five years it
has played a significant role in hastening the rise of man-to-man marking, the
hollowing out of central midfield and the tactic of playing over the opposition
press.
These are three of the themes that UEFA’s technical observer
tactical review highlighted from this summer’s European Championship,
epitomised by Slovakia luring England into a full press and almost scoring via
direct play up to their striker, and the Netherlands creating an overload in
the middle of the pitch against high-pressing Austria.
![](https://cdn.theathletic.com/app/uploads/2024/07/07230738/Slovakia-vs-England.gif)
It is why the scenarios below — one cluster of players around the penalty area of the team taking the goal kick, another just inside the opposition half and a sea of nothingness in between — have become a common sight across all top leagues.
‘The impact of the rule change was underestimated by many,”
said Arsene Wenger, the former Arsenal manager who is now chief of global
development for FIFA, world football’s governing body, in a review of the rule
last year.
“It was introduced to make the game faster and more
spectacular, but even more has changed. The main attraction is to attract your
opponent as far away from goal as you can, and try to play through. If you can
play through the first pressure, you have a whole half of the pitch to be
dangerous. That is what is at stake from the start.”
But how does a trend like this start to proliferate in such a quick space of time? And how has it become just as normal to see a centre-back passing the ball to their goalkeeper as the other way around?
It is something Arsenal regularly do, with defender Gabriel
playing to ’keeper David Raya before the latter punts long towards Kai Havertz
up front and the midfield cavalry race forward on supporting runs.
“What initially happened after the rule change was that it
made it easier to build up, as you weren’t having to play this long pass across
the box, which gave the pressing team the chance to get there early,” says one
first-team coach/analyst at a major European club, quoted anonymously here as
they did not have permission to speak.
“Back then, if the goalkeeper played it to a centre-back,
you had locked yourself down to one side of the pitch, whereas now if the
defender plays to the goalkeeper, you are dead-centre.
“Most teams bring midfielders to the box now and it just
makes the space much bigger to defend. It is so hard to be compact as, if you
want to get pressure on at the top end, the midfielders are having to match
midfielders, which naturally opens up space behind them.
“The question you are asking the opposition is, ‘Are you so
keen to get pressure on us that you are going to leave yourself three-v-three
or four-v-four at the back?’ Teams realised they had to commit more bodies to
force it long, which explains the rise of man-to-man pressing.”
Every action brings a reaction, however, and that is what
has happened, with teams realising they can manufacture false transition
moments by isolating their forwards.
“The attacking team’s response has been, ‘If you are going
to release six or seven players into the final quarter of the pitch, we’ll get
a goalkeeper who can put it over the top of your defence’,” the same
coach/analyst says. “There is no space between the lines now to be static and
turn on the ball. The concept has changed to become about leaving the big
spaces you want to be free and then arriving there at the right moment, so you
can run and your marker has to react to it.”
One of the most effective teams in the first few seasons
after the rule change were Italy’s Inter Milan, under Antonio Conte. As a coach
whose preferred brand of football is about rehearsed patterns of play, Conte
took advantage by manipulating the opposition’s setup to leave his attackers
with space to run into.
More recently, Germany’s national team have been creative in
their use of goal kicks, and in their March friendlies this year they showed us
how many different layers are involved in the thinking.
In this example against the Netherlands, goalkeeper Manuel
Neuer edges forward with the ball while his midfielders move out from the
centre to drag their markers wide and open up a central passing channel to
Havertz. The ball from Neuer is the trigger for the supporting cast to coalesce
around him, with Havertz’s lay-off springing a four-v-four opportunity.
The new rule gave coaches a blank canvas to go to work on,
and has produced many variations in how to try to gain an advantage in
build-up.
Southampton manager Russell Martin has been one of the head
coaches who has sought to rethink the setup.
One centre-back drops in line with the goalkeeper, receives,
and then waits on the opposition striker pressing him before playing a return
ball to the ’keeper, who had pushed up 10 yards so he could be used as the
spare man, just like another centre-back.
Leading French club Marseille’s new head coach Roberto De
Zerbi was bold in subscribing to almost exclusively short goal kicks in his
previous job at Brighton & Hove Albion of the Premier League but he was
even more experimental in the two clubs before that at Sassuolo in Italy and
Ukraine’s Shakhtar Donetsk.
In his 2020-21 debut season with the latter, he regularly
had his team play out with four players inside their penalty box, drawing the
press in before finding the spare man after they had lured the opposition
players to one side.
Last season, Hamburg-based St Pauli, whose manager Fabian
Hurzeler has succeeded De Zerbi at Brighton, attempted various high-stakes
routines on their way to promotion from the German second division, but the one
common theme was their motivation to have their goalkeeper advance with the
ball after receiving from a defender.
This meant his long kicks went even nearer to the opposition
goal, with the team higher up the pitch when contesting any resulting second
balls.
All of these teams vary their approach, as does new
Liverpool head coach Arne Slot.
When his Feyenoord team played short with the intention of
cutting through the press, however, they did it in a much bolder way than most.
Here, against NEC Nijmegen in the Dutch top flight earlier
this year, Feyenoord have goalkeeper Justin Bijlow stand still with the ball
and delay his pass until the very last moment, and centre-back Thomas Beelen is
trusted to dribble across his own penalty area and wait for a space to present
itself.
This is a more freehand approach, but there are clear risks
that come with playing like this inside your own penalty area — as many teams
have found out in the past five years. Which explains why setting the bait with
a pass to the goalkeeper and then going long has become the go-to strategy for
most top teams.
Football underwent a significant change five years ago and
we are only starting to understand how much tactical variety has been made
possible.