How the deep-lying forward is changing modern soccer tactics

As the game of soccer evolves and tactical trends change, player roles evolve alongside them. Much like how the modern goalkeeper must be adept with the ball at his feet as well as shot-stopping, the modern day striker is so much more than a goalscorer.

The generation of Samuel Eto’o, Andriy Shevchenko, Michael Owen, and Hernán Crespo began to be phased out by a new batch of strikers with a few in a completely different mold. Those were the strikers who played with their backs to goal instead of solely making runs in behind the defense. The three major contributing factors of the emergence of these strikers was firstly the death of the touchline winger, whose primary roles as a poacher's best friend were to beat their man and get a good cross in the box. As well as the drop in headed goals in today’s game.

The biggest reason though is the emergence of the ‘False-9’ in Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona team and subsequent possession-oriented styles. However, playing so far away from the goal as a False-9 does would be a waste of the goal scoring ability of the likes of Karim Benzema, Harry Kane, and Robert Lewandowski. So they took characteristics of the False-9 and created the Deep-Lying Forward.

What is a Deep-Lying Forward?

A Deep-Lying Forward (DLF) is a role of a striker that puts equal amount of importance on being involved in team possession as scoring a goal. You’ll often see them with their backs to goal, hovering in front of the defensive line, and they’ll often have as many touches of the ball as the other attackers alongside them. 

A key difference between a False-9 and a Deep-Lying Forward is that the False-9 is specialized to keep a high amount of possession for his team. They tend to drop dramatically deep, even as far as into the midfield when in possession in order to create more passing options. It's why you’ll occasionally see the likes of Phil Foden and Cesc Fàbregas before lined up as a ‘striker’, but they’re really playing in this role as hybrid midfielders. 

This helps achieve ‘numerical superiority’, which is a characteristic coaches like to have in possession-style teams. It’s why you see full backs inverted into the midfield as well. This often creates 5v4’s, 4v3’s and so on in smaller areas of the pitch. 

While the Deep-Lying Forward drops into the midfield as well, their primary function is still as a striker. The False-9 helps connect passages of play from midfielder to midfielder as a way of keeping possession, but the DLF is there to connect midfielder to attacker to create attacking moves further up the pitch. 

In this clip, Benzema’s movement gives a passing option to Toni Kroos while isolating Vinícius Jr. against Christensen. He plays the 1-2, then attacks the space from deep and gets on the end of a Vinícius cross, truly a Ballon D’or worthy play. 

The DLF will often position himself near one of the center backs, using his passing ability and good first touch to help give a winger or midfielder a forward passing option, while also limiting the defender's ability to make a challenge on the ball. 

While the poacher and touchline winger worked well together, the modern day winger (more of an inside forward) and the DLF are compatible because of how they can open up a defense with their combination, and slice through it themselves. The inside forward (Heung-min Son for example) may start out wide as a winger, but their aim is to get as close to the goal as possible as goalscorers more than creators. If they are paired alongside a poacher who has this same ambition, they may get in each other's way or at least clog up the attacking penalty box. 

The partnership between Kane and Son were slightly different from Benzema and Vinicius in the way that Kane would go much wider and play longer passes forward to Son, but the principle of drifting deeper or wider to create space for an onrushing attacker remains.

With the DLF, the winger and striker can literally ‘swap places’ so the penalty area is less congested and a clearer shot can be taken. 

This clip shows midfielder Pedri rushing past Lewandowski into the space he creates by dropping deep, who then flicks it on for Pedri in space

There are many ways to identify a Deep Lying Forward, it's important to stress that a DLF may still have just as many goals as any other type of striker, as they are equally responsible for goal-scoring as they are for bringing others into play. So the statistics that will highlight their role are often closer to the box.

• Key Passes: A key pass is any pass that leads to a shot on target. A common phase of play is a 1-2 pass from a winger to a striker that leads to a first-time strike from the winger, this would result in a key pass
• Lots of goal-scoring across the front three: When you see a team with relatively equal amounts of goals from the left and right forward, as well as the striker, that’s a good indication the team pairs a goal-friendly winger with a forward who likes to create space for them 
• Touches in penalty area: This highlights how the key difference between a DLF and false-9 is that the former will still be one of the furthest players forward. Their role in possession happens much higher up the pitch, and results in a lot of touches and passes around the box closer to goal
• Low Expected Assists: High expected assists numbers usually come from high-volume creators; wide players who have good vision or a playmaker in midfield. The Deep-Lying Forward will mainly have good creative numbers through key passes which only happen a few times a game. 
• Low Pressure Numbers: DLF’s spend a lot of their energy roaming the final third looking for the best spot to position themselves, in turn they will often reserve themselves out of possession resulting in poor defensive work from this type of striker.
• Low Aerial Wins: As mentioned before, these strikers are not trying to get on the end of crosses, a tall striker who still scores headers from corners can still be a deep-lying forward, but they aren’t going to complete many headers over the course of a game. It was only touched on before, but a lot of managers are realizing that lots of crosses into the box isn’t an efficient attacking plan. Nowadays, teams play primarily through the middle of the pitch and look for underlaps instead of overlaps.  

Here’s a radar via StatsBomb of Viktor Gyokeres at Sporting, you may hear about the Swede’s incredible ball striking and compare him to fellow Scandinavian Erling Haaland. However, Gyokeres is every part a Deep-Lying Forward, ranking fourth in the Portuguese League for Key Passes. 

There is no ‘best role’ of a forward, just as there’s no ‘right way’ to play the game. But as the game moves away from route one soccer and big and small teams continue to play mainly possession and transition styles, the Deep-Lying Forward will continue to have an enormous impact on modern attacking soccer. And while both the poacher and the DLF will score goals (the poacher may often score more) there’s an argument to be made that the team’s on-the ball play suffers when they use a poacher. With the new tactics of inverted full-backs and liberos, finding numerical superiority is the new trend in soccer, and it will often be in a style crowned with a Deep-Lying Forward.