Box to box midfielders might just be the most physical players on a pitch.
Have you ever just tried to sprint the actual distance between both penalty areas on a full-size football pitch? Even when swept along by the exhilarating thrill of a counter attack for your amateur team, that inevitably leads nowhere, it can feel an exhausting task.
But why is this kind of player important? FourFourTwo are here to explain why, with this tactical explainer on a common football term.
I'm Jack, I've watched football through a tactical lens for over a decade, analysing trends not only at the top of the game, but also how strategies and approaches can be used at amateur level.
I’m also an FA-level 2 qualified coach and have written extensively on tactical analysis for various publications. A lot of my spare time is spent training, playing the game, or settling down to perfect a tactical approach on Football Manager.
What is a box to box midfielder?
Going from box to box is the ability to run effectively, between your own team’s penalty area and the opposition’s.
Plenty of midfielders can physically get between both boxes. That isn’t why this skill is so hard to master.
In the clip above, the right-sided no.8 in a 4-3-3 drops back into the first phase to pick up the ball in build-up, before travelling with the ball to the other box.
The difficulty is doing this as a repeated action, in high-tempo matches. As a central midfielder, right in the heart of the action, going box-to-box can be difficult. The box-to-box midfielder is particularly prevalent in either a traditional 4-3-3 or 4-4-2 formation – and they're almost always a no.8 in this system.
In these systems the central midfielders need to cover a lot of ground to ensure their team can be solid defensively but also a threat going forward. It is all about balance.
Players performing this role need to help out defensively, making clearances and tracking opposing midfielders. But they also need to offer something of a goalscoring threat, while progressing the ball and sustaining attacking plays.
Who are the great box to box midfielders?
Let’s be adults and not turn this into another Steven Gerrard vs Frank Lampard debate. But England’s perennial noughties midfielders were brilliant box to box players.
They had a proper engines, could tackle and read the game. Both were also superb long-range strikers of a football, which helped with their general goal threat. The pair could also time a forward run to perfection. However, work they put in off the ball is often criminally underrated.
Not every no.8 is a box-to-box midfielder. Some no.8s are more like no.10s and tasked with playmaking duties in the halfspaces: for example, you wouldn't think of Andres Iniesta being a box-to-box midfielder – but he's most certainly a no.8. Other no.8s, like Jordan Henderson have more defensive responsibility, tasked with defending their channel and helping the team remain compact off the ball. Ultimately, a box-to-box midfielder is simply one who can be found contributing an almost equal amount in the first and final thirds of the pitch.
Going back a generation, Bryan Robson was the undisputed king of box-to-box midfielders in the 1980s and early 90s. Robson had everything you need to dominate a midfield. Stamina, power, strength, passing range.
He was also an expert at running into the box from deep to score – his two goals against France in the 1982 World Cup a textbook example. Robson’s eventual successor at Manchester United, Roy Keane was much more of a box to box midfielder earlier in his career, before he became a dominant defensive midfielder.
From the modern era, Yaya Toure, Arturo Vidal and Paul Pogba are all classic examples of box to box midfielders.
Does the role still exist?
We live in football’s age of increased specialisation when it comes to positions: so naturally there is less room for a balanced central midfielder, capable of doing everything quite well.
There is also the factor of speed. Admittedly this is more of a specific issue to England, but with games in the Premier League played at lightning speed, the stamina levels required to consistently go box to box are punishing.
Considering the Premier League and before it the old Division One gave birth to so many of the greats in this role, this perhaps explains why numbers in this position dwindled. Football teams dominated by technical ability and pace may not have room for an old-school box to box midfielder.
But they do still exist. Joelinton’s redeployment from misfiring forward, to box to box bulldozer was one of the cornerstones of Newcastle United’s revival under Eddie Howe. Douglas Luiz performed a similar role very well for high-flying Aston Villa, while Declan Rice is undoubtedly a box-to-box player for Arsenal. So no: the box to box midfielder is far from a thing of the past… but these days they might be likely to come from Rio rather than Rochdale.
