The striker defender

I grew up supporting Ajax, Olympique Marseille, Barcelona and AC Milan. I had no time for the football that was being played on my doorstep in England. It was "hard", unintelligent (in my view) and full of characters that I could not relate to. When you don't support a team in your country you tend to have many teams that you support in different countries rather than just one team.

My favourite Ajax player, Dennis Bergkamp, had moved to Internazionale much to my disappointment as I wanted him to go to AC Milan. Then suddenly he joined Arsenal much to my surprise. That prompted me to pay attention to Arsenal every now and then. But it was a time of scandals so my fan time was still very much dedicated to teams abroad. One afternoon when I returned from lectures at University in September 1996, I just happened to catch a news conference with the newly appointed Arsenal manager. He looked different. He sounded different. He sounded really different and interesting. Wenger captivated me immediately. Even though I had known of him at Monaco, I had never heard him speak. I decided that fate had brought Wenger and my favourite player, Bergkamp, to give me a local team to follow. The rest is history ... in the making.

All the above is to explain the kind of football fan I am. I am a romantic, I like football in a certain way and I admire only certain types players – ones that display real football intelligence. It is harder to spot this in defenders. English football celebrates "hard" or "non-nonsense" defenders - bruisers who terrorize strikers and leave them with cuts after 90mins. I have no time for those types of footballers.

In an interview with the BBC this week, Carles Folguera the director of La Masia, the Barcelona football Academy that produced Xavi, Iniesta, Fabregas, Messi, Puyol etc said "We're always looking for a type of player who's not physical but a very good thinker, who's ready to take decisions, who has talent, technique and agility. Physical strength is not important."

After the Koscielny's first game at Liverpool, I wrote a glowing review about Koscielny. I was so impressed with him and felt compelled and satisfied that he was a great defender – not just a good one – just from one game. Since then, he has been panned by fans and critics on several occasions but everyone is now coming round to the fact that Koscielny was a real find and will be a great asset to Arsenal. On Monday night, I was watching Fulham v Chelsea and saw David Luiz and got that feeling all over again. Both Luiz and Koscielny to a lesser extent remind me of the time I saw a grainy 90 minute video of Franz Beckenbauer in the 1974 world cup. Luiz has played only one match and it was Fulham but I was as impressed as I was when I watched Fabregas for the first time and I think Koscielny has the same type of qualities.

Defenders with real football intelligence – not just defending intelligence are rare. After watching Vidic and Kompany on Saturday, then Luiz on Monday and then Piqué and Koscielny last night, I was thinking about defenders a lot. In trying to describe Piqué, Luiz and Koscielny, I came up with the phrase "Striker Defender". I will explain.

The only way I can explain what struck me about Luiz and Beckanbauer (and to a lesser extent Koscielny and Piqué) is that it seems as if they defend by acting as if they were strikers for the other team. Most defenders pay attention to the man they are marking and their most prioritized task in build up play is to know where their man is and then during defending to work on their position and their man. Luiz on the other hand seemed to be more interested in the midfielders of the opposition during build up play. He reads them as if he was a striker in their team who is looking to make a run or find an opening. It makes him aware very early of where possibilities are because it seems he looks at it from the point of view of someone who is trying to exploit it and crucially that he pays attention to it much much sooner – before it becomes an attacking opportunity. Luiz seems to be marking the midfielders from a distance. As soon as he sees their decision about to happen, he almost makes the strikers run and arrives there way before the striker on the opposition or just before him.

It takes real intelligence in the game to be able to pay attention and analyse play in midfield and react to it before the ball recipient who plays with those midfielders everyday. It allows him to react either quicker or at the same time as the striker which makes it difficult for strikers to gain any kind of advantage on him.

You may argue that most defenders do that but I would argue that the degree at Luiz does it is so much more impressive and it is proven by how coolly he picks up the ball that is played, how few tackles he has to make to defend, how rarely he will ever go to ground and how much more efficient his forward passing becomes after winning the ball. It is the art of defending without tackling and defending as a part of starting a new attack for your team.

Luiz is 23 and is in for a rough ride in the premiership. Players of his type cope will with teams that want to play the ball on the ground to try to carve out an opening. Less than 40% of the premiership teams do that. Most balls in the box will arrive in the air from long distance and that throws out the rule book of proper intelligent anticipation. He will be mauled by premiership strikers in such situations but when the ball is on the ground, I think he will excel. The question is, what kind of impact it will have on his development to play with in both contexts. Will he lose what he has or gain a new side to his game. Time will tell. Right now, he is the most impressive defender I have seen at that age ever.

Arsenal have found that Djourou is great in the air and in standing his ground against direct balls to our defence. We have improved a lot in defence because Djourou has been able to do this – something that neither Gallas nor Touré were really good at and that Squillaci is certainly poor at. You combine that with Koscielny being good at reading the game on the ground and we have a good pair in defence who complement each other very well and means we can defend against Blackburn and Barcelona coherently.

While looking at Videos on YouTube and other places about defending when I was planning to write this, I came across 9 different goals conceded by different teams from Rory Delap's throw-ins and think I learned something about why they are so effective – I heard that about 17 of Stoke's 34 goals last season came from throw-ins (could not verify that) but it is clearly potent. Something for a piece next time.

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