THE RESSURGENCE OF THE CLASSIC 9

In the 1939/40 season the football association in England ruled that clubs had to wear a number on the back of their jersey, with shirt numbers given in ascending order from defenders to attackers. The goalkeeper got #1 and the attacking players got the higher numbers. This numbering system eventually caught up with the rest of the footballing world in the 1950 World Cup.

The 9 is the shirt number that was associated mostly with the player tasked with scoring goals for their team. The player is expected to be the team’s biggest attacking threat.

The classic 9 or popularly known as the target man was a huge part of football from the 90’s to the early 00’s. The job of a classic 9 was to hold up play and link with teammates, occupy the opposition center backs, be the pressing trigger when their team was out of possession and of course score goals.

This player was mostly used in a 442 formation where he was partnered with a more fluid or free-roam striker. Some of the greatest strikers were classic 9’s and they played within this period, players like Ronaldo Nazario de Lima, Alan Shearer, Gabriel Batistuta, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Hernan Crespo amongst others.

Football is ever evolving yet its cyclical, old ideas are constantly rebranded, tweaked and implemented and in the early/mid 00’s a wave of "new" ideas flooded the footballing world. Arsene Wenger came up with his hybrid 442/433 shape, Jose Mourinho adopted a rigid 4231 set up that ensured defensive solidity, Pep Guardiola rebranded the “Total football” idea from the Cryuff school and birthed the tiki-taka style with the use of a false 9.

Mourinho’s 4231 style caught on with smaller teams in the Premier League especially because of how it allows for more players behind the ball and with the price for strikers starting to rise these clubs couldn’t afford to play 2 at a time while having a spare one on the bench.

All these things led to the gradual phasing out of classic 9’s with teams opting to have a more fluid player leading the lines, a player that is comfortable with running the channels and with the rise of inside forwards, strikers were expected to create space for them and in turn sacrifice a few goals e.g. Rooney with Ronaldo, Firmino with Salah, Aguero/Jesus with Sterling, Benzema with Ronaldo.

Over the past few years the footballing world has been starved of proper out and out strikers, with only a few of them getting to the elite level (Harry Kane and Lewandowski). With that generation of strikers reaching the end of their careers there seems to be hope for classic 9 enthusiasts like myself. The likes of Victor Osimehn and Erling Haaland already making a name for themselves coupled with upcoming strikers like Evan Fergurson and Rasmus Hojlund making waves perhaps the cyclical nature of football will bring back an environment where this type of players can thrive.