Sweeper: Whoever said football was a game of 22 men chasing a leather ball should have been quartered and hung up to dry. Forget about the aesthetics of the game; it’s a sport where a lot of time is spent in getting the strategy right. Back in the 1930s, Austrian coach Karl Rappan developed the “security bolt” and overturning the traditional systems.
The “bolt” formation had four defenders with one of them stationed between the goalkeeper and the defenders. Known as the sweeper, this player would add defensive muscle to the back three and protect the goalkeeper. He was also tasked to clear loose balls in the final third.
This system (called catenaccio in Italian) reached its peak under the Inter Milan coach of the ’60s Helenio Herrera. For sure, it was a defensive approach but helped teams with less-talented players eke out 1-0 victories.
Libero: It had to take a genius like Franz Beckenbauer to change what was essentially a defensive position into the sexiest one in the team. Kaiser was not satisfied with just sweeping away or punting the ball. He had the flair, talent and vision to control the ball and stride across the turf.
Thus was born the libero, a player free to defend as well as be the fount of the team’s attack. The position remained the same but the role had changed; it gave teams an extra attacking player. A libero created space and freed his strikers from their markers.
With change in tactics, the libero like its defensive alter ego is dying. However, Barcelona still lets Pique take on an attacking role while Busquets plugs the defensive hole. Or Lucio, playing for Bayern a couple of years back, would gallop forward.
