I was watching a Messi and Zidane interview on YouTube. Zidane said the number 10 is not as important as it used to to be. The place and position of the number 10 are gone. He used 4-4-2 and 4-3-3 as an example, which are perhaps the two most used formations in football. Messi then agreed by saying there aren’t many 10 left and the position that shows such player is the leader, the midfielder, and the link player is gone.
It seems like the number is being handed to the superstars and to promote and advertise such players. Ansu Fati had no business wearing 10 for Barcelona. While Mabappe wears 10 for France, Griezmann is actually their 10. Rashford in Man United is not a 10. I could go on.
When Messi and Neymar retires from national team duty, Jude Bellingham seems to be the only young player to fill that void.
What do you guys think?
Messi was never an enganche to begin with anyway. He’s a right wing with an absurd talent for passing, and a tendency to switch from the right wing to the center to strike with his left from a position where his shots would likely not miss the target. He was never a midfielder and whenever he had to fit that role, his godly scoring capabilities were completely wasted (see Argentina with Maradona as the coach, who always put Messi as an offensive midfielder and had his worst numbers in the National team in that position).
The number 10 is usually given to that one creative player who commands the attacks. And both Zidane and Messi are certainly that player, but they didn’t play in the same spot, since Zidane was indeed an offensive midfielder.
What’s rarely used nowadays is the classic stationary offensive midfielder position and that’s a fact, but just because the game is now more fluid and having an creative player in just one place is a waste of potential. We have to remember the formations in the past were waaaaay more rigid than what we see now, so not only the “enganche” is changing, but also the classic defensive midfielders and the side half midfielders. In Argentina for example, Scaloni for his midfield uses THREE players that would’ve been labelled as “classic number 10s” some years ago, yet he gets the best for the team by teaching them new tricks in different zones of the pitch. And I believe skilled midfielders are going to be the norm in this age of football.
I’d have to be respectfully disagree. Mbappe doesn’t do exactly what Messi does. Mbappe is not a playmaker or nowhere near that.