Mapping the future of midfield

By TOM CURREN

On April 29, 2025, a host of Parisian red-and-blue arrived in north London. Luis Enrique’s Paris Saint-Germain were the Champions League favourites; they’d hit stride at the perfect time. At the apex of their fluid attack was Ousmane Dembélé who, since undergoing a surprising evolution into a lone No.9, had emerged as Europe’s primary goalscoring talent. The summer’s Ballon d’Or would adorn him the world’s best player.

PSG’s semi-final opponents seemed their perfect foil. Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal were considered the best out-of-possession side in the world by many analysts, a reputation built on a near-impenetrable centre-back partnership, the relentless engine of Declan Rice, and robust and physical pressing systems. They were experts at locking down talented attackers, and had allowed the triumvirate of Jude Bellingham, Kylian Mbappé and Vinicius Junior just one goal in 180 minutes during the previous round. 

Three minutes into the semi-final, Arsenal harass and harry. Martin Ødegaard leads the front two, Rice roams, Mikel Merino hovers beside him. They chase the ball backwards, locking PSG deep into their own half, with nowhere to go but Willian Pacho, the left centre-back. The moment Pacho touches the ball, it’s as if a switch is flipped: Arsenal go. Ødegaard tears forward. The team follow their captain, roaring towards the ball. Rice races up the pitch, Merino screams after the dropping Vitinha, Leandro Trossard and Bukayo Saka sprint towards their opposing full-backs. The ball is pushed to Nuno Mendes at left-back, deep in his own half. He’s cornered. Then, with one left-footed pass, he splits the middle of the pitch, right through a yawning gap in the Arsenal press, to find Dembélé, who has dropped from No.9 into central midfield, and is totally free. Dembélé leads the Parisians up the pitch and scores. Arsenal never recover.

When I sit down with The Athletic’s Jon Mackenzie and SCOUTED’s Jake Entwistle to discuss the future of midfield, this game is where we start. That moment - when Arsenal’s press fails to contain one simple, elegant pass that effectively ends their Champions League hopes - is illustrative, Mackenzie tells me, of a much wider tactical context. I’ve brought these two analysts together because I want to explore the mysteries of the midfield, and chart a course for where it might go next. Over the past few years football tactics have evolved perhaps faster than ever, supercharged by the era of data analysis and relentless, high-stakes competition. The players have changed with their environment. Rodri is the defining midfielder of this era, but just years ago John Stones dictated a Champions League final next to him. Physical monsters like Declan Rice are en vogue, but there’s still a pedestal for technicians like Pedri and Vitinha. Full-backs are midfielders now, and vice-versa: some have inverted into the pivot, as Oleksandr Zinchenko did to define Arsenal’s 2022/2023 campaign; many now push further forward as No.8s, as Nico O’Reilly does today. Matheus Nunes, signed supposedly as a ball-carrying No.8, is now Manchester City’s first-choice right-back; low-touch, high-impact passers like Adam Wharton are coveted. Elliott Anderson is almost priceless because he can simply do everything. Is Cole Palmer a midfielder? What about Morgan Rogers? Bernardo Silva was a No.10, but now starts as a No.6. Nick Woltemade is a 6’6” left-winger, No.9, and now apparently a midfielder. Joelinton, Jack Hinshelwood, Joshua Kimmich, Rico Lewis, Ryan Gravenberch, Konrad Laimer - what’s going on? 

All of these players occupy a loosely-defined area of the pitch - the middle - to do wildly different things, for wildly different reasons. This journal is packed with our favourite top-level midfield talents, but to understand what future-proofs a midfielder, we need to map how the tactical tides of the midfield have turned, and are turning. What follows on these pages is an acroamatic, academic discussion that twists and turns over itself as we attempt to untangle an ever-changing question; in many ways, it’s about the questions more than the answers. Many will find that frustrating, but I think the eternal chase for understanding is what makes football a continually gorgeous pursuit. Part of being a good football analyst is resisting the temptation to be definitive or prescriptive about the future, and that is particularly prescient when it comes to questions of the midfield. After I finished writing this essay, I asked Entwistle to look over it, frustrated I hadn’t found a satisfying conclusion. “Phase-based recruitment is prominent and midfielders are multi-phasers,” he said. “So it’s still a huge problem to solve. The goal is just to introduce others to the questions we’re asking.” You might consider this our attempt at that introduction. 

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When Jake Entwistle was researching his latest SCOUTED Archetype, The Berserker, he leaned heavily on Jon Mackenzie’s writings on the hybrid press. For the uninitiated, ‘hybrid pressing’ refers to a dual system that combines both ‘zonal’ - a tight, structural arranging of players to each cut off a specific zone of the pitch - and ‘man-to-man’ - having each player individually press a specific opponent - pressing systems. Mikel Arteta employed hybrid pressing in the above example against PSG. Arsenal were arranged zonally in their typical 4-4-2 as their opponents circulated possession; unable to find a way through, PSG went home to Willian Pacho, a ‘trigger’ - meaning Arsenal had been instructed to rapidly switch states when he gained possession. Even before the ball arrives at Pacho, Arsenal jump into their famed man-to-man press like a heat-seeking missile, aiming to aggressively win the ball in a horrifying area, or at least force a hapless punt up-field. They failed at both.