What Happened to all the Football Strikers?

 It dawned on me.

When on my radio show, I put it out to the floor to try and name five quality strikers. People could only name three at best. THREE. That's it. There are only three strikers who you can deem worthy of the greatness that have played in that role. The rest have evolved (or devolved) into this new false-nine way of playing.

Gentlemen...we are witnessing the dark age of the striker.


If you cast your mind back to the late 90's and maybe the early 00's, the game was dominated by great
strikers. Players who lived and breathed goals, and footballers who knew how to work the hotspot that is the 18-yard box. It was was time of Ronaldo, Batistuta, Bierhoff, Weah, Shevchenko, Hasselbaink, Shearer. These were not players who would be content with just helping the team without a scoring a goal. They were brought in for only one purpose and that was to win games for their team. They were relied upon to put the finishing touch on the hard work the goalkeepers, defenders and midfielders as well as the coach had done. Strikers were respected back then, heralded as heroes. You could have a serious heated debate as to the best strikers because there were so many of them with different characteristics. At one point, that all changed, and the game morphed into a version where the striker was no longer needed anymore.

The start of this had to have begun with Barcelona and Spain's football dominance. A pretty bad time at football were most teams were really on a downer and there wasn't a lot of quality. With the Spanish ideology, they put far more focus on the midfielder, and keeping possession of the ball. Also, they used the midfielder as an attacking weapon, meaning it was a lot harder for defenders to track runs because there was no defined striker, and runs could come from anywhere on the pitch. Hence the term "false-nine."











With the midfielder now being able to do the job of the striker, and with this philosophy giving Barcelona several La Liga titles and Spain European and World success, there was no longer any need for strikers. So you now had players like Benzema who started out as a cold-blooded finisher for Lyon, now being used as a linkman for Madrid without any real requirement to be a selfish S.O.B in the penalty box as he was with Lyon. So players starting off as strikers were now encouraged to be less selfish and more giving, and work with the midfielders. It's meant you have a lot of matches now where there is a lot of passing but hardly any penetration, and there are less chances being created due to less shots being taken which would have come from natural born strikers.


I for one cannot comprehend how you would field a team without a striker. That's the first thing. The very aim of this lovely game we all have passion for is goals. A striker is born to score goals. That's is his main job. That is why he is the furthest up on the pitch and that is why he's the one that stands on the halfway line when his colleagues are all back defending during an opponent's attack. They are the first option that a team ought to use when trying to get a goal in a game.

Then the second thing is why strikers are now required to have a different role other than scoring goals. It's definitely helpful for a striker to have more to his game than just finishing. You saw that with Ronaldo who was really the first striker who actually was an amazing footballer with every attribute needed at a maximum level. So of course, having these things are helpful but they should not be the only requirement. If a striker is not giving you a certain number of goals, then that has to be a problem. Even though he is helping the team, I think that it is harming football if you don't have the concept of the striker in its most traditional form.

There are two certainties in life; death and things always change. Football is not immune to change and we are simply in an age where there is not a surplus of quality strikers around. Back in the day when there were several finishers, you didn't have the kind of gifted midfielders that you now have. If you took the midfielders of this era and combined them with the defenders and strikers of Ronaldo and Weah's time, then you would have a totally unbeatable team. Perfection like that doesn't happen in this world. So for the age of the striker to return, something will need to be sacrificed in order for that to happen.

I do love what Silva, Gotze, Gundogan and Iniesta have brought to football. It's amazing seeing their creativity and invention as well as how they've evolved the art of passing. To now get rid of that would be a big loss of football. At the same time, I do miss having an array of strikers, and seeing them go on those solo runs, or do amazing feats of individuality that you don't really get with midfield players.


As a compromise...can we at least be able to name more than THREE quality strikers. You can give me that...at least.



HH