The great goal scored by Riccardo Calafiori in the 22nd minute of Manchester City-Arsenal, the clash between the best teams in the most important league in the world, is clearly the beginning of something beautiful. Or rather: it is the natural and hoped-for continuation of something beautiful that began three months ago, at the European Championship, when Calafiori – the best player, together with Donnarumma, in an Italy that was no more than mediocre – allowed the Azzurri national team to get through the group stage with a powerful surge forward finished with a beautiful assist, all in the 97th minute of the match against Croatia. For a defender, that kind of individual move would once have been an exception. But that is no longer the case: Calafiori’s goal against Manchester City is also the peak, one could say the point of arrival, of a long journey. Of a strictly personal journey, that is, one concerning the remarkable growth experienced by Calafiori over the last year and a half, but also of a decidedly more multifaceted, more cross-cutting evolutionary process: the one involving the entire category of defenders, their duties, their physical and technical inclinations.
For years now, people have been talking about a new prototype of defender. Perhaps it would be better to say that there has been discussion of a new prototype of defender, in the sense that the birth and establishment of different tactical models based on possession have clearly influenced the physical and technical characteristics of those who play in the back line, and not everyone has appreciated this metamorphosis. If we wanted to condense everything into a few words, into simple phrases within everyone’s reach, we could say that today a high-level defender cannot limit himself to being a great marker and doing the offside trap and preventive covering well, but must be able to control and distribute the ball with a certain quality.
Starting from this new condition, inevitably, various further evolutionary processes have originated: defenders – central or wide, it does not matter – have begun to move systematically into other areas of the pitch, in order to create greater density in the construction, creation and finishing phases of the move. Above all in Italy, then, we have also witnessed the change in perspective on the back three: until a few years ago, coaches in love with that system were considered incurable speculators, since the presence of a third centre-back and two full-width wide players, crudely called wing-backs, was a guarantee of an approach that was at least cautious, at times blatantly containment-oriented. Today things are different, in fact the back three has become a starting point for developing sophisticated mechanisms for moving up the pitch, or for hyper-aggressive, and therefore hyper-offensive, marking systems.
It is precisely in this magmatic context that defenders have emerged who are not only multitasking, but with marked and evident attacking qualities: they are centre-backs who can also be used out wide and/or who turn into attacking full-backs when the situation requires it, they are midfielders or even added forwards in the possession phase. They are, very simply, sources of attacking play. And before some nostalgic person raises a hand to point out how all these novelties end up undermining pure defensive output, effectiveness in physical duels, in marking, in preventive covering, there is evidence to support the opposite: we could cite the performances of recognized champions such as Van Dijk, Rúben Dias and Rüdiger, and instead we are still talking about Calafiori, to whom after Man City-Arsenal an article was dedicated in which his «defensive art» was described and celebrated, in which his «continuous duel with Savinho» was praised. And it was an article published by the Times, not exactly a tabloid or a provincial newspaper.
Together with/alongside Calafiori, a generation of defenders with an ultramodern profile, one could even say post-contemporary, is establishing itself. On the foreign market one can mention Hincapié, White, Colwill, Cuenca, but one must look above all to Italy: the founder of the new sect is certainly Alessandro Bastoni, but Scalvini, Buongiorno and Okoli can also be considered centre-backs who can be used in attack too. In different ways, because their characteristics are different: Bastoni is extremely skilled at overlaps – both inside and outside – on the left, and thanks to the understanding built with Dimarco he has become a genuine additional full-back-playmaker, to the point that he has already delivered 3 key passes in the four matches of the 24/25 league season in which he has played; Scalvini also has qualities as a holding midfielder, as a pure play-builder, while Buongiorno may not be extremely refined when carrying the ball, but he is a runner of great impetus, and in fact his forward surges often create numerical superiority in the opposition half, now also in Conte’s new Napoli; Okoli too really likes joining teammates from other departments after moving up the pitch with the ball at his feet, except that his stride is less impetuous, his progressions find an outlet above all as passes along the vertical axis, toward the forwards.
Since he joined Inter, that is from 2019 to today, Alessandro Bastoni has put together 206 appearances and four goals in official matches (Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)
In light of all this, not by chance one is tempted to say, even a coach like Spalletti – an idealistic fanatic of building from the back – has officially announced that Italy’s reconstruction cannot do without a back three. It is not a regressive choice in a defensive sense, nor one in line with tradition; rather it is the head coach’s adaptation to the material he has available: the presence of certain players guarantees a certain degree of quality and sophistication in bringing the ball out, and the first fruits of this change have already been seen against France and Israel, moreover with five different centre-backs – Bastoni was the only one to have started both matches, alongside him Calafiori, Di Lorenzo, Buongiorno and Gatti alternated.
But, as mentioned, it is not only a matter of passes, of contribution to the first build-up: the new Italian defenders have a marked aptitude for movements that are increasingly deep and increasingly diversified, they more and more often move alongside the midfielders to open passing lanes and then continue to move up the pitch until they invade the opposition attacking midfield line. It is something different from the runs with the ball at the feet of the old sweepers, from those plays that made Beckenbauer, Scirea, Baresi and others so modern, and therefore unique: those were surges that in some way quickly reversed the attacking front, launched counterattacks, exploited the spaces left by opponents. Now defenders carry and/or distribute the ball to create those spaces. And they do so systematically, in codified fashion; indeed, coaches start precisely from certain situations to refine their tactical mechanisms.
This, then, is the key to everything: if for years now centre-backs have been protagonists of building from the back, of the first part of the move, now there is a new trend whereby their duties, their functions, are increasingly varied. In the sense that they are genuine attacking weapons, weapons that are drawn at regular intervals, indeed ever more frequently. And when the ball is in motion, not only from set pieces – as happened in the past. The fact that Italy is somewhat the epicenter of this transformation, in some way, can and must be a source of pride. The fact that Scalvini, Buongiorno, Bastoni and Calafiori are considered great defenders, also and above all at international level, tells us that we still have a system capable of producing novelties and talents. That is no small thing, it cannot be taken for granted. It never can be, let alone in this not exactly golden era for our football.