Šjor Bepo
Wout is love, Wout is life; all hail Wout!
- Joined
- Mar 29, 2011
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- 16,362
It's hard to say because there isn't a big pool of centre-backs who have either played super high or who played under the modern offside rule. Pre-Sacchi most teams weren't particularly compact, unless they sat deep. The only exceptions off the top of my head would be Hansen's Liverpool, and maybe Kyiv and Holland. So that rules out a lot of great defenders from the debate. I think the change to the offside rule between passive and active players came into force around '94 (the Bebeto/Romario goal against Holland at the WC being the first high profile example) so Baresi would have been exposed to some of that at the end of his career. Post-94 none of the great Italian defences positioned themselves that high, so that again rules out a few contenders. Stam and De Boer were probably the most noticeable exponents towards the end of the 90s. It's not really until Pep came along that more elite teams defended regularly on the half-way line. That throws Pique, Puyol, Boateng, Ramos, Silva and Varane into the conversation, and Van Dijk certainly stands at the top of that group.
Those are the only guys who were really proven and performed in high-line game scenarios. But equally I think the greatest defenders who weren't as proven in such a system, but still stood out for their genius in reading the game and for defending the space in behind, could do a great job too. I reckon Moore, Figueroa, Beckenbauer and Passarella would have all had the nous and proactive instincts to pull it off.
yeah its a bit of a niche category but an interesting one as i reckon this is gonna be a standard system for top teams from now on....
Im sure we could find more high line teams, Marseille of the 90s often played it with Mozer and Boli in defence. Hajduk played it in late 70s under Ivic and so on but yeah, the most interesting one is Baresi as a direct comparison.
Its not even active/passive thing that is an issue, its often only active players in the incident and they are getting it shockingly wrong. As a defender you only needed to start moving up and they would call it, often the active player would be 1-3 metres onside. Its insane to even see it in isolation let alone with the current VAR calls in todays game.
Yeah id probably give all of those 4 the benefit of the doubt in the high line but you cant compare them to someone that actually done it.