In today’s post, we investigate the evolution of the Winger position in modern football from the 2002/2003 season to the 2020/2021 season, nearly 20 years of evolution.
We’ve looked into some of the most predominant Wingers from the 2002/2003 season, such as David Beckham, Luis Figo, Marc Overmars, Kily Gonzalez, Pavel Nedved, and Robert Pires, and compared them to our modern-day players playing on similar positions, Kilian Mbappe, Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mane, Raheem Sterling, Marcus Rashford and Kingsley Coman.
The aim of this investigation is to compare the actions, roles and responsibilities of these players and check if indeed we can find some changes and development of the winger position.
We could not find data available for the 2002/2003 players for the current season, so we used the data showed on Championship Manager 2002/2003 as reference for the purposes of this investigation, the data collected from the modern players was gathered via Instat.
Looking at the technical qualities of the traditional winger and the modern winger, we collected data from the following KPI’s;
- Crosses
- Dribbling
- Finishing
- Heading
- Long Shots
- Set Pieces
- Tackling
The radar above shows that the 2002 Winger had a much higher percentage of involvement in Crosses, Long Shots, Set Pieces, and Tackling, while the 2020 Winger had a substantial increase in Finishing.
Data showed an increase of 20% of finishing for the 2020 Winger, however a decrease of 32% in Crossing.
Following the radar chart, we conducted a cluster analysis to identify where these Wingers stand compared to each other while considering their finishing ability with other KPIs such as Crosses, Dribbling, Heading, and Long shots. This analysis separated the Wingers into 3 different clusters, and it also allowed us to confirm that the modern winger has become better at finishing. On the other hand, the last cluster analysis shows us that Wingers from 2002 were better at long-range shooting than the modern wingers. Additionally, 2002 Wingers fared better in Crossing and Dribbling while being closely matched in Heading with some of the modern wingers. Coman seems to be an outlier when it comes to Dribbling.
Following the data, we can conclude, a shift in the profile of the 2020 Winger in relationship with the 2002 Winger has occurred.
So why such a difference between the 2002 Winger and the 2020 Winger? What caused this change? Was it the role Wingers play now in the modern game? Was it due to a change in a tactical approach?
We started to look at the positioning and action areas between the two to narrow down the possibilities that caused such a drastic change between them.
We have reviewed match footage from all 12 players in order to understand more which areas these players operated in a match.
Data collected shows 2002 Wingers have more touches on the ball inside the wide channels and very few touches inside the 18-yard box, with Pavel Nedved and Luis Figo showing more versatility and operating in different areas of the pitch and David Beckham with more actions inside the 18-yard box. Data collected from the 2020 Wingers highlights the increase of touches inside the 18-yard box from all the players and also more touches were recorded inside the central corridor.
One of the factors contributing to the Winger to play in more central areas and not operating on wide areas mirroring the actions of 2002 Wingers is due to a tactical approach. More and more we see teams using the Full Backs higher on the pitch and more attack-minded on the wide channels and Wingers slowly transforming their skill sets and becoming a Forward, operating more centrally, showing up in more finishing positions, therefore, justifying the increase in their percentage of finishing and diminishing their percentage on crossing actions, like the examples showing bellow;
With the data collected, we can conclude, the change on areas of action on where the Winger is operating, made a change on how the traditional 2002 Winger, the wide player looking for cross has now become the modern 2020 Winger, which comes to more central areas and is finishing more. We also would encourage the readers to find/think of other factors that could have contributed to the evolution of the winger.