The Disappearance of the Traditional Winger in Serie A

Autumn in Rome always arrives late. In October, mist still clings to the grass at Trigoria when I walk through the familiar iron gate, where I have stood for more than forty years. That day, I noticed a detail so small that perhaps no one will remember it: on the left flank, two young players from the U19 side were practising long passes down the touchline. They passed to each other, ran, and passed again. It was an exercise I remembered from my youth, when Italian football still believed in the touchline. Then training ended. When the ball rolled in the competitive match, both players turned inward, searching for space between the lines. I stood there, listening to the studs striking the tunnel floor, and thought: the touchline runner is quietly disappearing from Italian football. I am about to turn sixty, but the kick-off whistle makes me young again for ninety minutes. And in those ninety minutes, every weekend, I witness a strange migration: players born to hug the flank are collectively abandoning it, drifting into central areas. They no longer run down the pitch, no longer cross from the byline. They receive the ball on their weaker foot, turn, and look for the shot. It is a change that has unfolded quietly over fifteen years, to the point that people now take it for granted, as though football had always worked this way. But football did not always work this way. And the cost of this homogenisation, I believe, is slowly revealing itself. Context: from touchline to central corridor To understand why the traditional winger is disappearing, one must remember that Italian football once worshipped the width of the pitch. For decades, Serie A produced pure wingers, men who made an entire career out of beating a full-back and crossing. They did not need to score many goals. They needed to hold the touchline, create space, and deliver the ball into the box from the flanks. That role was tied to a simple philosophy: width stretches the defensive line, and a stretched defensive line opens the central corridor. The shift began in the 2000s, as tactical systems moved from 4-4-2 to 4-3-3 and then to 4-2-3-1. In a 4-3-3, the winger is no longer a wide midfielder but a wide forward. He stands higher, closer to goal, and is expected to score rather than merely assist. In a 4-2-3-1, the three players behind the striker are usually inverted-footed, and that is when the concept of the inverted winger became the norm. I remember a press conference at Formello, around 2026, when an Italian coach told me he no longer wanted his players to touch the ball near the touchline, because there they had only two options: cross or lose the ball. He said the player had to receive between the touchline and the central corridor, where he had four options instead of two. It was a very Italian, very pragmatic way of putting it. And it changed the way an entire generation was trained. From my vantage point, having followed Serie A matches for more than four decades, this change did not come from a single coach or a single club. It came from data. When clubs began measuring the scoring probability of each shot, they discovered something simple: shots from central areas are worth far more than shots from narrow angles. An inverted winger can reach that zone; a traditional winger cannot. So academies began teaching young players to turn inward from a very early age. The screens flicker constantly, but the ball still rolls to the old rhythm. The curious thing is that while data changed how the game is played, it did not change the nature of the game. The game is still a sequence of decisions in tight space, and tight space still demands the same skills as before. It is just that people now believe there is only one correct way to use that space. Core: the mechanics of the inverted winger To analyse this phenomenon seriously, it must be separated into three layers: receiving position, direction of action, and the relationship with the full-back. The first layer is the receiving position. A traditional winger receives the ball in the area known as the wide channel, a strip roughly ten metres wide from the touchline inward. An inverted winger receives in the area analysts call the half-space, the zone between the wide channel and the central corridor. This is the core difference. In the half-space, a player can move in four directions instead of two, and he is roughly fifteen to twenty metres closer to goal. That distance, in football, is an entire career. The second layer is the direction of action. Receiving in the half-space on his weaker foot, a player can turn toward goal with a single touch. He does not need to beat the full-back with pace; he only needs half a metre of space to strike. This is why so many modern wingers score twenty goals a season, a figure the traditional wingers of the previous generation rarely reached. The third layer, and the least discussed, is the relationship with the full-back. When the winger drifts inside, the full-back behind him has the entire wide channel to advance into. The result is that the attacking role along the flank shifts from the winger to the full-back. Modern full-backs such as Theo Hernández or Denzel Dumfries do not merely defend; they attack, cross, and even score. This is a redistribution of roles, not the disappearance of width. I have observed this redistribution for years, and what struck me is its uniformity. Nearly every big club in Serie A uses the same structure: two inverted wingers, two high full-backs, a holding midfielder, and a central striker. This uniformity means teams can easily read one another, and matches become a battle in tight space between two defensive lines. Take a concrete example. In a match I followed at the Olimpico last season, the home side controlled nearly sixty per cent of possession but managed only nine shots, four of them from outside the box. The opponent defended with a low block of eight men in an extended penalty area. When the winger drifted inside, he immediately met two central midfielders and a deep-lying centre-back. No space. When the full-back crossed, there was only one striker in the box, against three centre-backs. The success rate was very low. This brings me to an observation about the cost of homogenisation. When every team plays the same way, the advantage shifts from the one with the best skills to the one who breaks the pattern. And the most effective way to break the pattern, in many cases, is to return to width. But to do that, you need a traditional winger, someone who can hold the touchline and cross accurately. The problem is that generation has almost vanished. At the training ground, I once met a player crying over a misplaced pass. He was nineteen, played on the left, and had just been scolded by the coach for a cross that was too high. I asked whether he practised crossing often. He said he did not, because from childhood he had been taught that crossing was the last option, that he had to learn to cut inside. He did not have the tools to do what the team needed from him in that situation. It was a small moment, but it says a great deal about how Italian football has trained the next generation. It must be said clearly that I do not oppose the inverted winger. It is a genuine technical advance, and players like Federico Chiesa or Khvicha Kvaratskhelia have proven its value. What I oppose is its monopoly. When a solution becomes the only solution, it stops being a solution and starts being a habit. And habit, in football, is fertile ground for teams that know how to break it. Look at how the best defensive teams in Serie A deal with the inverted winger. They do not try to stop him receiving in the half-space, because that is impossible if you want to keep your structure. Instead, they block the inward turn by placing a central midfielder in that zone and a centre-back ready to cover. When the winger receives, he has no room to turn and is forced to play backwards. This is how many mid-table teams have neutralised Serie A's most expensive attackers. The paradox lies here: the inverted winger is designed to create space centrally, but when every team has two of them, the centre becomes more crowded, not more open. The space is filled by the very players sent to exploit it. This is an effect analysts call central congestion, and it is a direct consequence of tactical homogenisation. I remember an evening in Rome, sitting in a café near Piazza del Popolo with a former Serie A coach. He told me Italian football had lost what he called patience on the touchline. He said that in the old days, a winger could hold the ball on the flank for thirty seconds, wait, and then cross. Today, no one holds the ball for thirty seconds. The ball must move, must turn, must go inside. That patience has vanished, and with it an entire art. The stands are louder now, but I miss the noise of the time before mobile phones. In the old days, when a winger beat his man and crossed, the whole stand rose at once, and the noise rose from the floor of the stadium, not from a screen. Today, when a winger cuts inside and shoots, the stands still roar, but there is a silence before it, as people wait to see whether he will do the right thing. It is the silence of calculation, not of surprise. Contrarian angle: the traditional winger is not dead What I want to say, and this is the part I consider most important in this piece, is that the traditional winger is not dead. He is merely hibernating, waiting for a team brave enough to wake him. The evidence lies in this: the teams most successful in recent knockout matches are often those that know how to use width as a surprise weapon. When an opponent has grown used to defending against two inverted wingers, sending on a pure touchline winger can shatter their entire defensive structure. This is why such players still have a place at big clubs, even if they are no longer considered the centre of the system. There is a common misunderstanding that the traditional winger is outdated because he does not score enough goals. But this assessment ignores his spatial value. A traditional winger keeps the opposing full-back pinned wide, which means a centre-back must cover, which means the central corridor gains an extra gap. He does not score the goal, but he creates the goal for someone else. His value is not in the goals column but in the space column. I believe the homogenisation of football we are witnessing is a cyclical phenomenon. Whenever a tactical solution becomes widespread, it generates a reaction. In the next ten years, I predict a revival of the traditional winger, not out of nostalgia, but out of effectiveness. Teams that understand width is a strategic weapon will hold an advantage over teams that only know how to cut inside. Of course, the traditional winger of the future will not resemble the player of the past. He will have to be able to cut inside when needed, and to cross when needed. He will be a bipolar player, capable of operating both on the flank and centrally. This is the model I believe will define the coming decade, and it demands a more balanced education, not one focused solely on cutting inside. There is one more thing I want to say about the role of academies. For years, Italian football academies have trained young players according to a single model: good technique, cut inside, shoot with the weaker foot. This model has produced many fine players, but it has also produced uniformity. When every young player is taught the same skill, they become interchangeable, and their individual value falls. A good education must produce diversity, not uniformity. This is something I believe Italian football is slowly realising. A contract is only a piece of paper; a team is signed by the rhythm of its feet. And the rhythm of a traditional winger differs from the rhythm of an inverted one. Both are necessary for a complete team. The problem is that Italian football has forgotten one of the two rhythms. Progressive conclusion The disappearance of the traditional winger is neither progress nor loss. It is a shift, and every shift creates both opportunity and void. The question I leave to those who run Italian football is this: will they have the courage to train a generation of players who can run the touchline like their forebears, while still mastering the skills of the age? If they do, they will hold an advantage no team can copy. If they do not, they will continue to homogenise themselves, and wait for another team to break the pattern they created. Everyone in this era speaks fast, but football needs people who listen slowly. I will keep standing at Trigoria each morning, watching the young players, and waiting for the first one brave enough to hold the touchline again. When that person appears, I will write about them, as I have written about all the others over forty years. Because football, in the end, is still the story of people brave enough to do what others consider outdated. Homogenisation is a trend, not a destiny. And in football, every trend has its day of ending. The traditional winger will return, not because we miss them, but because we need them. That is what I believe, after more than forty years standing on the touchline and listening to the breathing of the match.