What Grinds My Gears Vol. 1

Number 10

I’ve always maintained that it’s well within a commentator’s rights to say a few inane things. It must be tricky to go a full ninety minutes without saying at least one boring thing and I can sympathise with that. What I can’t abide is when a phrase that is clearly erroneous is parroted so frequently that it becomes embedded in the vernacular of the sport. The question of whether ‘daylight ‘ exists between players being a pre-requisite for offside comes to mind as a total invention of football analysts. This was never the rule, nor should it be, but for years pundits harped on about the need for daylight, oblivious to the fact that it was utterly irrelevant.

What’s really in vogue now, though, is the phrase “number 10”: “Mata is a great number 10”; “Rooney is more of a number 10 than ever”; “Spurs seem to have ten number 10s on the pitch.”

But hang on a minute - Where does Messi supposedly play, because it would appear to be absolutely everywhere? Should Jack Wilshere be playing ‘in the hole’ because he’s number 10 for Arsenal? Is he out of position every week? Should someone tell Stoke to stop playing attacking midfielders until they give one the number 10 shirt? Are Edin Dzeko and Emanuel Adebayor (number 10s for Manchester City and Spurs) not two of the most archetypal power forwards in the league? The numbers on the back of players shirts don’t dictate how or where they play; managers do. 

Noone had a go at Thierry Henry for wearing 14 and RVP reportedly chose number 20 to spur him on to win United’s 20^th league title. Yet commentators insist on using the phrase  “number 10” to describe a particular type of playmaker. What’s most frustrating is that sometimes, according to this paradigm, a number 10 is a defence splitting midfield maestro, playing just behind the front line, like Mata or Coutinho and others he is a forward who drops deep to involve himself in build up play, like Aguero or Robbie Keane. The phrase “number 10” to describe almost any attacking player needs discarding into a graveyard along with “YOLO”, “Bieber Fever” and “it’s always in the last place you look.” Of course it is – after that you stop looking.