Things I’ll Miss in South Africa: The Classic Number 10

In March of this year, Juan Roman Riquelme turned his back on international football, bowing out of the World Cup, taking a whole glorious reign of artistic football with him. Jonathon Wilson describes him as ‘the last of the old school playmakers’. Argentine international Jorge Valdano speaks in more gushing terms, saying "Riquelme's brains save the memory of football for all time … he is a player of the time when life was slow and we took the chairs out on the streets to play with the neighbours.”

There were fewer impeccably beautiful sights in football, at least to a British eye, of the nonchalant ease of a classic Number 10 - a Riquelme, Valeron, or Rui Costa drifting between the lines, sliding perfectly weighted passes, caressing long-range slanted shots, and hovering untouched and out of reach. Past tournaments, in recent history, were riddled with these players, France '98 had the bewitching Ortega, Bergkamp, Zidane, and two years later Euro 2000 saw Rui Costa and Francesco Totti come to the fore in a terrifically open, attacking tournament.

Then came the prominence of the battling defensive midfielder ‘destroyer’ in Europe, rather annoyingly always referred to as the ‘Makelele role’. Along with the evolution to the common three central midfielders across the top leagues, this meant for an all too crowded workspace in which the classic enganche could work. The creative fulcrum of the team could no longer dictate the play with a specific South American elegance, he had to adapt and evade the robust jam packed midfields of the European leagues. Most struggled. The Argentineans - Pablo Aimar and Javier Saviola, amongst others - have failed to live up their potential in the past decade as ‘the new Maradona’.

The talisman of the top countries going into South Africa: Messi, Ronaldo, Rooney, could and would perhaps have been deployed in this role had they been born ten years earlier, when the fashion for the position came to a glorious head at the turn of the century, before being phased and kicked out the game. These three have instead become key examples of the demand for ‘universality’ of players in the modern game. All three have been used in recent years out wide, as a false nine, alone up front or in deeper roles.

Maradona admitted to losing sleep over how to fit Riquelme into his team without disrupting his system. Portugal will miss the time when a Rui Costa would have flourished. Their midfield has an awfully defensive slant, and Ronaldo has to drop far too deep to collect the ball and attempt to make an impact. This lack of a fixed, languid role in modern football seems to have left their footballing sensibility at a loss, failing to score against Cape Verde.

These players are, to me, romantic anachronisms. Having one creative master acting as a ‘gateway’ to all attacks is redundant. As much as the dynamism of modern football has created truly great players as Rooney and Messi, who will, of course, impact greatly upon the World Cup, and are both much more complete players than your Valerons, Ortegas, Riquelmes and Rui Costas, I shall miss the golden age of the Number 10.

So I mourn their passing. I raise a glass to the old school playmakers; sullen, temperamental, often suspended, often under 5 ft, gliding and feinting about, usually with floppy hair and massively oversized shirts, all with a deftness of touch and utter genius. All operating within twenty yards of grass.

by James Mackey