Thomas Muller, Mesut Ozil and the death of the Trequartista

Football is a beautiful game and in so many ways. It’s arguably the one sport, there might be other contenders, that boasts nothing but beautiful sights. Oceans of fans flooding stadiums, chants running rings around the players, and then there are the men making it all worthwhile on that hallowed green rectangle. Real Betis and Quique' Setién’s tiki-taka engages, Liverpool’s heavy metal football excites, Peter Bosz and Daniel Farke’s kamikaze style of football gives you goosebumps. It’s brilliant, beautiful and makes every second worth watching and there will always be masters of the game.

They paved the way for modern football and enhanced it from just a game to the greatest game ever played. Modern football may be starved of that position but the near past saw the likes of Mesut Ozil, Isco Alarcon, James Rodriguez, Thomas Muller, Christian Eriksen, Paulo Dybala and Juan Fernando Quintero epitomize the modern downfall of football’s greatest spot. Players who do not fit in the puzzle that is modern football’s desperate search for structure and efficiency. Instead, they thrive on being elusive, lackadaisical and love creating chaos.

While removing a creator isn't the way to get results, replacing him with three other players helps their cause. Formation switches from a standard 4-2-3-1, 4-3-1-2, 4-3-3 (with two holding midfielders) to a 4-3-3 or a 3-4-3 or even a 3-5-2 and all three formations have no space for passengers. Instead, they need players who are willing to contribute to every aspect of the game and then some, alongside the burden of doing their usual work. And that means that there is no longer a space for a passenger or an elusive playmaker-esque player and it’s caused a few problems to say the least.

"This type of player. This pure No 10, is … how do you say? Extinct? Maybe not extinct, but not as used as before."

Juan Mata to the Athletic

The one position that’s been ever-present or nearly ever-present on every team have now transformed into quarterbacks. They almost always doing just that but now it’s become much more prominent. So prominent that man-marking one out of the game could potentially win it for you but yet the Jorginhos, Kroos, Alonsos and even Fernandinhos of the world have taken over everything. They’re backed with the rise of the marauding full-backs as creators in yet another shocking development but one welcomed by managers.

Manchester City infamously spent close to a £150 million on full-backs, Liverpool built their own pair from scratch, Barcelona’s Jordi Alba has run the left-hand side for many a year and Marcelo has won plaudits for his offensive dominance and rarely for his defensive. In fact Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andrew Robertson's stunning display of creativity last season has rather brilliantly taken the footballing world away from depending on just the one man. It signalled a change in the world but even then there are still traces of the old fashioned Trequartista. It’s faint but it’s there all across the world. 

But it's there in the more conventional sense of the word as well, everpresent in those men smart and cunning enough to fool managers into believing that they're more than just pure flesh and blood born to do nothing but attack. Kevin De Bruyne, David Silva, Bernardo Silva, Ivan Rakitic, Frenkie De Jong and a myriad of other players do it well but not as number 10s or as Trequartistas. But instead as hybrid men placed deeper down and since they're so effortlessly brilliant they're more than capable of doing it from anywhere. 

It's why there are traces of that lazy, lackadaisical, effortlessly brilliant and incredibly intelligent player that once dominated world football but for how much longer before it's snuffed out by the all-action superstars?? The Trequartista may be a dying breed of superstars but as football moves through yet another phase in its life, they will return. Whether it will be just as entertaining, brilliant and just as good as it was before, we may never know. But things rarely are.