Pep Guardiola is widely recognized as the coach who popularized the inverted full-back role in modern football. This tactical innovation, which first emerged under Johan Cruijff at FC Barcelona during the early 1990s—when Guardiola himself was a player—has been revitalized and refined under Guardiola's leadership.
At MyGamePlan, we offer a unique capability to assess your game model, focusing on specific player roles and behaviors expected from individuals and the entire team. Our advanced tools allow us to measure the most intricate principles set by a club and seamlessly link these insights to video analysis.
In this post, we will explore how clubs are currently utilizing MyGamePlan to evaluate and coach the positioning and performance of inverted full-backs, providing valuable insights into this critical aspect of modern football strategy.
What is the role of an inverted full back?
In the build-up phase, the primary objective of the inverted full-back is to create a numerical advantage in midfield. By advancing into more central positions, one or both full-backs contribute an additional presence in the midfield, effectively increasing the team's options in this crucial area.
This tactical shift provides an extra passing outlet for the center-backs during the build-up, facilitating the progression of the ball through the central channels of the pitch.
How can you measure this with MyGamePlan?
There are several ways to approach this and also multiple metrics to evaluate the success of an inverted full back.
- We can track the availability of the full back in the central area of the pitch
- We can track how many times the centre back actually reaches the inverted full back
- We can track how many times this strategy is used to actually accelerate the play through the centre
Measure availability of the full back in the central area of the pitch
To do this we have to describe the situation to MyGamePlan about when we expect the full back to invert to the central area of the pitch, and track how many times the full back was actually in this area.
Here you have the liberty to describe any situation, and create a custom zone to describe where you want your full back to appear.
Measure the passes received by the full back in the central area
Next to the availability of the full back we can also evaluate how many passes he actually received in this area.
Of the 2023-2024 Premier League season the clubs with the most passes to their inverted full backs were:
- Liverpool FC: 7.22 passes per match
- Arsenal FC: 6.15 passes per match
- Manchester City: 4.53 passes per match
- Brighton and Hove Albion: 4.4 passes per match
Evaluate if the full back moves the ball forward after receiving the pass
The next and last phase is to measure if the fullback actually moves the ball forward after receiving the ball in the centre area of the pitch. This we can do in the following way.
This allows us to see all the video footage of the passes received by the full back in this center area and calculate the percentage of passes he gave forward after receiving this pass.
These three trackers give us the perfect evaluation of the positioning of the inverted full back.
- The availability of the full back
- The passes to the full back in the right zone
- The progression of the ball of the full back
If you need more inspiration on how you can create your specific style of play metrics, click here.
MyGamePlan is a Belgian startup founded by Berten Knaepen and Dries Deprest, using their expertise from working experience at different clubs. They help clubs like Bayer Leverkusen, KRC Genk and QPR to reach their targets by connecting different data sources into one tool.
