It takes all types of people to make this big beautiful world but only three to make up a World Cup attack: runners, passers, and dribbly bois.
Runners get the goals. Scoring is mostly about finding good shots, and finding good shots is about off-ball movement. Finding space where there shouldn’t be any is how you win games. It’s what strikers do.
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Passers get the glory. They decide where the ball goes and how it gets there — without good on-ball decisions and deft placement, all the runners in the world are just wasting sweat.
As for the dribbly bois, they get the hype. You do not technically have to take on three defenders to score a goal, in the same way that you don’t have to slide down the banister to breakfast as a kid, but everyone understands it’s the way to go. It’s fast, it’s fun, and it only occasionally ends with you writhing in agony on the ground.
Christian Pulisic made his name as a dribbler.
It feels like a lifetime ago now, but back at Borussia Dortmund he was one of the best young players in the world at jet-skiing up the sideline and zipping in and out of traffic with spray whipping behind. Teenage Pulisic was fun, man.
These last few years at Chelsea, where life is less dribbly and a lot less fun, Pulisic has also become a gifted off-ball runner. His former Chelsea manager Frank Lampard used to praise his talent for arriving in the box to find shots. Frank Lampard! A noted former box-arriver himself! That’s a pretty good blurb for your LinkedIn profile.
But that’s not what Pulisic wants to be for the US men’s team. He wants to be The Guy.
See, there’s an elite, fourth type of attacker, reserved for grown-up dribbly bois who have learnt to pass and score. They can do it all. Team-mates feed these dudes the ball as much as possible and let them do pretty much whatever pops into their heads to break down a defense. They’re playmakers.
As the United States’ designated playmaker, Pulisic is a winger who doesn’t really play on the wing. He comes inside to what tactics nerds like to call the “half-space,” about halfway between the sideline and the middle of the pitch. The idea is that he’s wide enough to get on the ball but central enough to be a goal and assist threat.
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In vertical terms, he likes to hang out between the other team’s defensive line and their midfield. There’s not much room between these lines, but if you can receive the ball there and face goal, it throws defenses into a panic. Will you dribble at them? Curl a shot from the edge of the box? Slide a through ball to a runner in behind?
If you’re a playmaker who can do all three, nobody knows — and it’s terrifying.
So yeah, sure, putting a playmaker between the lines in the half-space makes sense. It’s where super-duper-stars like Lionel Messi and Neymar pull the strings for some of the best teams at the World Cup (behind Saudi Arabia, of course).
But as the US learned — not for the first time — against Wales on Monday, an inside playmaker can also pose some problems.
One of the problems is structural. When a winger plays on the wing, it’s easy for them to receive passes outside the defensive block. But when the winger tucks into the half-space, not only is it harder to pass to them with all the bodies in the way, but the attack sacrifices important width that could stretch the opponent’s back line from sideline to sideline.
If you’re the kind of team that wants to “disorganise the opponent with the ball”, as Gregg Berhalter likes to say, you need to rotate somebody else out to the wing to keep your shape.
The way that worked in the first half against Wales was that when Pulisic came inside to his little playmaker hole, left back Antonee Robinson scampered up the wing to maintain width. Yunus Musah, the left midfielder, would drop out into the space where Robinson used to be, completing the rotating triangle.
Rotation fixes the structure while also, in theory anyway, helping with a second problem: how to get the ball to your playmaker in between the lines.
When Musah received the ball out there in what is usually the full-back’s territory, Wales’ three-man midfield would shuffle to that side so that Aaron Ramsey could close him down. Pulisic would follow behind Ramsey, creating a dilemma for the Welsh.
If Ramsey’s pressing angle took him too far outside, Musah could slip the ball around him to Pulisic. But if Ramsey stayed narrow, Musah had an open lane to Robinson, who could tap the ball back inside to Pulisic, who would now be on the ball in space, facing goal, in prime playmaker territory.
Once he’s there, not only can he dribble in at goal, but any defender who steps to him leaves a hole where he can put Robinson or Josh Sargent, the striker, in behind. That’s what makes playmakers dangerous.
Sounds great, right?
Yeah, well, it didn’t happen.
For the first 35 minutes, the US had approximately all of the possession — okay, 68 per cent, but it felt like a lot — and not much to show for it. There were a couple of good looks early on from a play that started with a Walker Zimmerman long ball over the top to Tim Weah, a runner type, but that whole disorganizing the opponent with the ball thing never really materialized.
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If you paid attention to the Americans’ World Cup qualifying campaign, this probably didn’t come as a shock.
They’ve consistently underwhelmed at the style their manager says he wants to play. They take up all the right positions, make the right rotations and (sometimes) off-ball runs, and generally look like a well-coached positional side, but it just doesn’t work. They can’t break defenses down from sustained possession.
Part of it is that Pulisic the inside playmaker puts everyone in the wrong place.
Musah, a dribbly boi if ever there was one, was miscast as a passer dropping out to an area where you’d normally see a more conventional midfielder, like Toni Kroos, looking to pick apart defenses from the outside in. Musah’s best moments against Wales — and some of the team’s best, period — came when he stayed in midfield near Tyler Adams and dragged opponents around with his slippery carries.
Robinson, a runner, did threaten to get up the wing but Musah and Tim Ream rarely looked for him over the top. Instead, he dutifully held width for that little outside-in pattern to Pulisic that never really came off. Since Pulisic wasn’t receiving on the wing at the edge of the defense, Robinson couldn’t overlap and cross the way an attacking full-back might normally do. He was just kind of… there… holding the team’s shape.
As for Pulisic, he’s never been all that convincing as a central playmaker. He’s not super-special at receiving on the half-turn in tight spaces, which is what makes your Neymar-types great in that role. He can’t use his speed there the way he could dribbling up the wing or running in behind. And when he does get the ball between the lines, whether it’s in the build-up or in transition, his decision-making often lets him down.
Am on my second rewatch and the second-half decision making is killing me.
This pass… did not get hit. pic.twitter.com/4H9IJTLCOg
— Matthew Doyle (@MattDoyle76) November 22, 2022
But just when you might have been thinking that you’ve seen this movie before, like those Ambien-grade snoozers against Canada and Costa Rica where the US struggled to do much of anything against competent defenses, the game cracked open for a few seconds and Pulisic made the play that mattered most.
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It’s worth pointing out that the goal didn’t come from sustained possession. All that fancy rotation stuff, the tactical emphasis on overloading wide areas to beat Wales up the wing? None of it mattered. It was a fast break following a long Welsh goal kick that got Pulisic on the ball in the half-space.
But for that one play, things clicked.
Pulisic did the playmaker thing. He dribbled at defenders between the lines. He slid a through ball to Weah, who’s very much a runner type of winger, and the US went up 1-0 in their first World Cup 2022 group game.
🇺🇸 ¡GO USA, GO USA! 🇺🇸
🔥 Tim Weah tiene a @USMNT ganándole a #WAL.
😍 Mira el JUGADÓN que armaron.
📺 Telemundo la casa de la Copa Mundial #Qatar2022 #MundialTelemundo #ElMundialLoEsTodo #USAvsWAL pic.twitter.com/HU5k0i6Kg3
— Telemundo Deportes (@TelemundoSports) November 21, 2022
It didn’t last, of course. Their total inability to cope with Wales’ more aggressive pressure after the goal, or to create chances in transition, are probably more relevant things to worry about for their game against England on Friday and, inshallah, the knockout phase beyond.
Don’t forget that first-half period before the goal, though, because that’s what this team wants to be. They want to dominate possession and win the ball back high up the field (which they did very well — all that careful structure was good for something). They want to disorganize the opponent with the ball.
But they also want Pulisic to lead them as an inside playmaker, with all the rotations and role changes that entails, and it’s still an open question whether that’s who these guys really are.
GO DEEPER
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