The late 20th century and start of the 2000s were all about the 4-4-2, in which traditional wingers were tasked with getting to the byline and crossing to a pair of strikers, as well as helping out their full-back in defence.
A number of managers, perhaps most notably Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola, soon brought an end to that, however, with their favoured 4-3-3 systems helping bring through a new generation of winger.
That type of winger soon became commonly known as an inside forward, a role that allowed a wide player to become their team’s primary threat.
But what exactly makes a player an inside forward? Who are the best examples of the role in the modern game? And what makes those players better than the rest? All will be detailed below.
In this article we’ll cover:
What is an inside forward?
The inside forward is a role which has grown over time. During the 1950s and 1960s, the good old days when you could get away with playing five attackers, two inside forwards would play off the central striker with another two wingers beside them.
Inside forwards were closer to being false nines than they are now, however, with the role changing significantly since the turn of the millennium.
Wingers almost always matched their flank to their favoured foot in a 4-4-2, but the 4-3-3 gave managers an opportunity to switch things up, placing right-footers on the left and vice versa.
This was a move to provide more goalscoring opportunities for wingers, allowing them to cut inside and create a better angle for themselves than if they had gone down the wing towards the byline.
The positions an inside forward takes up are also crucial, hence why possession-dominant managers favour them over traditional wingers.
Depending on which phase of an attack a team is in, having two wide players come inside will create an overload in the middle of the pitch, get more bodies into the box or open up space for a full-back to overlap.
With that in mind, it is no coincidence that the most dominant teams of the modern era – Guardiola’s Barcelona and Manchester City, Zinedine Zidane’s Real Madrid and almost any iteration of Bayern Munich – have tended to deploy at least one inside forward.
Which modern players play the role?
The inside forward is one of the most effective roles in football and it is one which allows talented players to flourish. So it should come as no surprise that two of the greatest footballers in history both played much of their careers as inside forwards.
Lionel Messi eventually became the best false nine the game has seen, but both before and after that spell under Guardiola, he was beating left-backs, curling in screamers and being the greatest player on the planet from the right flank.
Like his long-time foe, Cristiano Ronaldo has also spent time as a striker. He started as a traditional winger but, once Sir Alex Ferguson saw his potential, opening up space for him to rack up the goals became the priority.
Ronaldo became the first non-striker to win the Premier League Golden Boot in the 2007/08 campaign. That signified a shift towards inside forwards becoming just as prolific as traditional attackers, with Sadio Mane, Son Heung-min and Mo Salah (four times) all winning the award since.
Neymar, Gareth Bale, Raheem Sterling, Arjen Robben, Lamine Yamal, Vinicius Jr. The list of elite inside forwards is never-ending, highlighting just how effective this role truly is.
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