In the history of football, arguably no one else has boasted a trademark move as obvious, as established and as consistently effective as that of Arjen Robben, who announced his retirement from the game this summer: Receive the ball wide right, cut inside, shoot. And repeat.
Yet watch a compilation of Robben’s 99 Bundesliga goals for Bayern Munich and you discover that, in reality, his highlight reel comprises a range of strikes. Robben scored poacher’s goals by converting crosses from the opposite flank, sprinting in behind the opposition to finish one-on-one chances and sometimes — sometimes — dribbling down the outside of left backs, too.
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But the Robben classic is ingrained in our minds, not solely because he relied so heavily upon that move but because that reliance was a relatively novel concept in football. It might be too strong to consider Robben a tactical revolutionary but he’s certainly the greatest exemplar of a tactical revolution — specifically, the dominance of the inverted winger, playing on the opposite flank to their stronger foot. It’s a phrase that only came into use in 2010, which was, not coincidentally, the year of Robben’s first season together with Franck Ribery at Bayern.
To illustrate Robben’s style, it’s worth rewinding over 15 years to his two-season spell with PSV Eindhoven, and assessing his competition for a place out wide. There, he was battling with two wingers who would also later move to the Premier League and play in multiple World Cups. Together, the trio neatly encapsulate the evolution of the winger over the past 30 years.
The first was Danish speedster Dennis Rommedahl, who represented the winger of the 1990s, the winger of the entire 20th century. He depended exclusively on searing acceleration — Rommedahl could sprint 100 meters in 11 seconds — and was overwhelmingly right-footed. And therefore, Rommedahl spent his career deployed on the right flank, preferably in a 4-3-3, sometimes in a 4-4-2. Rommedahl would hug the touchline, receive diagonal passes to feet, then storm past the opposition left back and cross, with varying levels of accuracy. No one ever questioned whether this was the optimum use of Rommedahl’s qualities: it was simply the natural approach. It was just what wingers did.
Second, there was a player who would come to define the subsequent decade, the 2000s: Park Ji-sung. The emphasis upon overlapping fullbacks meant wingers were increasingly judged on their defensive discipline rather than their attacking ability. Big Champions League knockout ties during that period were often about cautious, defensive-minded midfields with only the fullbacks offering forward running.
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Park, who was a more exciting player at PSV, boasting stepovers and sudden changes of direction, became the most obvious exponent of marking opposition fullbacks during his time at Manchester United. He sporadically offered a counterattacking threat — usually through decoy running rather than overtly technical touches. Therefore, Park could be fielded on the left or the right with minimal difference to his contribution in the final third.
And then there was Robben, who would become the archetypal, inverted, goal-scoring winger on the right flank. (Even though, during that stint at PSV, Robben played more often on the left, and, ironically, he was criticised for going down the line too often rather than coming inside and using his right foot.)
With that in mind, Robben’s most instructive PSV goal was his final strike for the club, in the 86th minute of a comfortable 3-0 victory over Vitesse Arnhem. It was classic Robben — get the ball out wide, cut inside and shoot into the far corner — except for one very peculiar thing: Robben received the ball on the left flank, cut inside and shot with his right foot.
Don’t adjust your screen — this is not one of those dodgy YouTube videos that’s been reversed in an ambitious attempt to circumvent copyright law. Robben actually shoots with his right foot, albeit after a more familiar series: He traps the ball with his left foot, dribbles with five left-footed touches, checks inside with his left foot, rolls his left foot over the ball, throws a stepover with his left foot and touches the ball inside with his left foot before reluctantly swinging his “chocolate leg,” as they say in Holland.
The play underlines Robben’s mentality. He was, from either flank, a winger determined to score goals rather than merely assist them, and despite dispatching that shot into the top corner with his right, he was evidently left-footed. Therefore, his natural home would be on the opposite flank.
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Robben became more accustomed to the right during his three years under Jose Mourinho at Chelsea, although Mourinho hadn’t made a concerted decision to deploy inverted wingers — he simply found himself with two excellent wide players who were both left-footed in Robben and Damien Duff. If both were to play, one would have to be on the “wrong” flank.
Though he won two league titles, Robben’s spell at Chelsea wasn’t entirely happy. There were injuries, there were issues with his defensive work rate and there was also the presence of both Shaun Wright-Phillips, an old-school winger who went down the outside, and Joe Cole, who developed into a diligent, disciplined operator who Mourinho praised for his tracking back.
At this stage, the Premier League hadn’t truly embraced inverted wingers. There were occasionally individual wingers who would play on the opposite flank; Robert Pires was right-footed and played on the left for Arsenal, for example, although he was comfortable bypassing right backs on the inside or outside.
Besides, Arsenal’s other winger was Freddie Ljungberg, also a right-footer. There’s nothing fundamentally interesting about a side playing one inverted winger. Things become a lot more significant with two — it’s evidence that the manager favours a completely different type of wing play, turning down the option for ‘natural’ width in favour of goal-scoring threat.
Throughout this decade, no Premier League side deployed two inverted wingers. If you had a right-footer and a left-footer, they were deployed on the right and left, respectively: in 2006-07, Robben’s final season at Chelsea, Manchester United used Cristiano Ronaldo and Ryan Giggs on their natural sides.
More tellingly, Rafael Benitez’s Liverpool used Jermaine Pennant and Mark Gonzalez in the same way. Later, they would give way to Dirk Kuyt and Albert Riera, players tasked with shuttling up and down vertically. Benitez’s love of Kuyt, in stark contrast to Mourinho’s frustration with Robben, illustrated the preferred characteristics of wide players during this period. Both were Dutch wingers. But Kuyt wasn’t a natural winger and he wasn’t stylistically Dutch.
Robben’s period at Real Madrid was, by and large, more of the same — inconsistent flashes of brilliance punctuated by constant injuries. Notably, he was fielded almost equally on the right and on the left, and never allowed to get into a rhythm. His 13 goals for Madrid included only two typically-Robben strikes: a picture-book goal for the winner at home to Villarreal in 2008-09, driving inside from the touchline to the D before arrowing the ball into the far top corner, and a less spectacular version away at Numancia, where he cut the ball low inside the near post. He actually scored more headed goals — three — than classic Robben goals.
He was forced out in 2009, along with fellow Dutchman Wesley Sneijder. Sneijder joined Inter, Robben joined Bayern and those two sides contested the European Cup final the next summer — fittingly, at the Bernabeu. It was a good example of Real’s tendency for transfer market errors.
Real’s decision, in fairness, came because they had just spent a world record fee of £80m on Ronaldo, whose astonishing goal-scoring form over the subsequent nine years outstripped anything Robben was capable of. Ronaldo was himself a major factor in the increasing dominance of the inverted winger: his goal-scoring explosion at Manchester United coincided with his move from the right to the left, and at Real he would seldom be fielded on the right, generally only on rare occasions against Barcelona, when Mourinho was scared of Dani Alves’ overlapping and shifted Ronaldo away from the left.
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But Ronaldo became more of a second striker than a winger, and could be fielded centrally or on the left. Likewise, his great rival, the left-footed Leo Messi, was deployed centrally or from the right but never on the left. Today, the idea of Ronaldo or Messi playing on their “natural” side seems ludicrous.
The decisive year for inverted wingers proved to be 2010; in hindsight, it set the tone for the subsequent decade. That year, in the Europa League final, Fulham manager Roy Hodgson used left-footed Duff on the right and right-footed Simon Davies on the left. Meanwhile, Quique Sanchez Flores of Atletico Madrid had right-footed Simao Sabrosa and left-footed Jose Antonio Reyes cutting inside. Simao was once the hottest young right winger around; Reyes was expected to become an outstanding left winger upon his move to Arsenal. But times had changed.
The European Cup final featured Inter boss Mourinho using the left-footed Goran Pandev on the right flank and right-footed Samuel Eto’o on the left. They were more strikers than wingers, and during the final actually played more like supplementary fullbacks. But they fit the pattern and they eventually defeated Bayern, whose default system featured Robben cutting inside from the right onto his left foot, and Ribery — although he was suspended from the final — cutting inside from the left onto his right.
It was Bayern who proved the greatest practitioners of this new standard of wing play. Ribery and Robben were a remarkable duo, not merely because they managed to form a partnership despite starting on opposite flanks, and not merely because they didn’t initially get along and once came to blows after squabbling over a free kick but because they lasted a decade together.
Both had bounced around various countries beforehand; Ribery because of disciplinary problems, Robben because of injury issues. From their first appearance together, in the second half of a 3-0 win over Wolfsburg in August 2009, when Ribery teed up Robben for two goals on the break, it seemed this was something special. Bayern chopped and changed in terms of defenders, midfielders and strikers but Robben and Ribery were constants for 10 years, not just defining Bayern’s play but that of their position.
It is peculiar that the manager who helped to reinvent wing play was Louis van Gaal. During his period with Ajax, Van Gaal was a staunch advocate of traditional wingers, ordering Marc Overmars and Finidi George to hug the touchlines, stretch the play at all times and dribble past the opposition fullback down the outside.
His shift toward inverted wingers, coming inside to pull the trigger, was a significant change. The era of defensive wingers, like Park and Kuyt, was a response to the emphasis on attacking fullbacks, but so too was the rise of the inverted winger — it was simply a more proactive response. With fullbacks now stretching the play and crossing, wingers were free to cut inside and shoot. Robben’s relationship with Philipp Lahm at Bayern was the best example.
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Robben’s defining goal of that crucial season in the development of wingers, 2009-10, came in the Champions League second round, away at Fiorentina: Bayern were 4-3 down on aggregate but a second away goal in Florence would take them through. Fiorentina had doubled-up effectively against Robben all night, protecting left-back Felipe with left-sided utility man Juan Vargas. But that largely missed the point; Robben had no interest in attacking Felipe. He received a pass from compatriot Mark van Bommel and dribbled laterally — darting off Vargas and then inside of central midfielder Cristiano Zanetti before belting the ball into the far corner. The opposition left back wasn’t relevant to his movements.
This set the tone for the next decade of Robben in the Champions League — the goals don’t need description beyond the teams and dates: Fiorentina in 2010. Barcelona in 2013. Manchester United in 2014. Roma in 2014. Juventus in 2016. Arsenal in 2017.
And in the Bundesliga, there were many more. The dots in the graphic below show the location of Robben’s 99 goals for Bayern in the German top flight.
Perhaps 99 in 10 seasons doesn’t sound overwhelmingly impressive, but Robben was frequently injured. Ninety nine in 201 games sounds more respectable, and a goal every 142 minutes even better. The nature of his shots comes as little surprise — he attempted a left-footed shot every 25 minutes in the Bundesliga, and a right-footed shot only every 247 minutes. In other words, he was ten times more likely to shoot with his left than his right.
Upon Pep Guardiola’s arrival in Bavaria in 2013, many predicted that he wouldn’t appreciate Robben. His Barcelona side had used wide forwards making off-the-ball runs in behind the defence rather than wingers getting past by dribbling. But Guardiola adjusted his approach to help Robben thrive and, on occasion, completely reformatted the side to make him the star.
The best example came in Bayern’s incredible 7-1 victory at Roma in the 2014-15 Champions League, when Guardiola played the most indecipherable system of his managerial career. It featured a three-man defence with only one wing back (on the left) plus Xabi Alonso dropping back into the defence, Philipp Lahm shuttling between the centre of midfield and the right, Mario Gotze as a No. 10 and Thomas Muller as a second striker. Robert Lewandowski led the line and Robben was allowed complete freedom to stay high up the pitch, on the last line of defence, running in behind the opposition left back, Ashley Cole — his former Chelsea teammate.
Bayern’s system was designed to isolated Cole, who endured the most difficult night of his career. Robben opened the scoring with his usual goal, albeit from a tighter angle than usual, and Bayern ran riot. Robben added his second, and Bayern’s fourth, after half an hour; Cole was completely flummoxed, expecting a ball into Robben’s feet, and was caught out by a through-ball inside of him, perfectly into Robben’s path. Goalkeeper Morgan De Sanctis was also spooked, expecting a curler into the far post. Robben smashed it in at the near. Cole was removed at half-time, for his own sanity.
Partly thanks to Robben’s brilliance, the concept of playing inverted wingers on both flanks has now become established. Since Ribery teed up Robben to score Bayern’s winner against Dortmund in the 2013 Champions League final, each European Cup-winning side’s regular lineup since has featured, in various systems, inverted wingers.
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Real’s four European Cups were based around Ronaldo cutting inside from the left and Gareth Bale from the right. Barcelona’s triumph in 2015 saw Neymar and Messi doing something similar. Reigning European champions Liverpool boast right-footed Sadio Mane as a left-sided forward and left-footed Mo Salah as a right-sided forward. It’s difficult to recall any instances of these players switching flanks.
This has become the standard way to format an attack, for European giants and underdogs alike. The best Premier League example of recent years is Leicester City in 2015-16. For all the focus on Claudio Ranieri’s emphasis upon counterattacking, and the tackling figures recorded by N’Golo Kante, we overlooked the fact that Marc Albrighton and Riyad Mahrez were fielded as inverted wingers, in stark contrast to the type of wingers that came before them in Premier League-winning sides.
Coincidentally, it was Ranieri who had signed Robben for Chelsea 12 years earlier, convincing the Dutchman that a move to Chelsea, rather than Manchester United, was best for his career. Ranieri, though, had been sacked by the time Robben joined.
The current generation of left-footed wingers idolise Robben, even those not capable of his consistent brilliance. “I look at the top wingers and see what they do, especially inverted wingers,” Newcastle’s Matt Ritchie said a few years back. “Arjen Robben is a great example for me. I love his movement off the line and when to run in behind, the extra pass he plays in the box. He’s bright, he’s sharp, he moves it inside onto his left foot.”
Another obvious example, Crystal Palace’s Andros Townsend, once made the dubious claim that Robben is “probably quicker with the ball than without the ball,” and constantly attempts to score Robben-esque left-footed shots from inside-right positions. When he manages it — notably at home to Burnley last season — you can’t help but think of the Dutchman.
The same goes for when Townsend’s Palace side were on the receiving end of a Robben-esque strike from Brighton’s Anthony Knockaert in March or, most memorably, when Salah scored an extraordinary effort against Chelsea during the title run-in. That archetypal goal marks Robben out as very different from other great wingers in history; Stanley Matthews, George Best and Luis Figo all won the Ballon d’Or but they didn’t help to reinvent wide play.
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The next generation might be different. Guardiola’s Manchester City, who are playing the most futuristic football of the moment, have featured advanced wide forwards in Raheem Sterling and Leroy Sane in their back-to-back title successes. They attack on the outside of fullbacks and square the ball to one another for tap-ins. It is Guardiola’s fullbacks, rather than wingers, who come inside.
Maybe this will be the approach of the next decade, and fielding two inverted wingers will come to be considered a relic of the 2010s. If so, it may be Robben who comes to define this decade — the decade of the inverted winger.
(Photo: Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)
