This is part of the How Football Works series, a piece-by-piece look at the mechanics of the game.
The secret to Arsenal’s success is that players know their roles. Bukayo Saka plays high up the wing. Martin Odegaard works between the opponent’s lines. Then there’s boring old Ben White, a former centre-back playing as a full-back, whose job is to protect the two stars by taking up a safe position somewhere back behi…
Record scratch. Freeze frame. Yep, that’s our boy Benny. You’re probably wondering how he got here.
If you’ve ever read a tactics article — and if not, wait, please don’t go — you know that Arsenal do something called ‘positional play’, which is a fancy way to say they like to maintain a careful structure in possession. That doesn’t mean guys can’t move around, though. One nice thing about structure is that it makes it easier for players to swap positions and still know exactly what everyone’s supposed to be doing.
Advertisement
In a well-drilled side, such as Arsenal, you’ll see team-mates reading each others’ movements for cues about where to go. When one player wanders out of his position, another arrives to fill it. Then someone else might go fill that guy’s spot, and so on, so that the team in possession winds up in more or less the same shape as before while forcing opponents to make all kinds of choices about who to follow.
This exchange is known as ‘rotation’, and it’s a fundamental part of how positional sides disorganise defences.
Switching places with a team-mate is nothing new — it’s what the whole Total Football thing was about half a century ago — but in the hyper-controlled game of Pep Guardiola disciples such as Mikel Arteta, rotations are rehearsed down to when and how players will swap positions in response to a particular ball movement or defensive adjustment. They’re as much a part of modern tactics as passing patterns or pressing schemes.
One of the most common rotations you’ll see from a lot of teams is a triangular exchange near the sideline: a full-back goes up the wing, a winger comes inside and a midfielder drops out to where the full-back used to be so they can receive the ball in space. (In some variations, the winger stays wide while the full-back moves into an inside channel.) We’ll call these “wide rotations”.
Not every coach is a fan of this elaborate style of play. When the United States played Mexico a few weeks ago, Jesse Marsch stirred up debate on the half-time show by criticising Gregg Berhalter’s tactics. Why should Gio Reyna — an attacking midfielder who likes to play between the lines like Odegaard — drop all the way out into the full-back space? Marsch didn’t see how these “complicated rotations” helped the team.
Every tactic has its trade-offs, of course, but some of Arsenal’s brightest sequences against Bayern Munich in the Champions League this week showed why wide rotations can be worth doing.
Advertisement
At the start of the possession where White took off on a striker run, Arsenal began in their usual expansive 4-3-3 against Bayern’s classic Thomas Tuchel defensive setup: a flat line of five at the back, spanning the width of the pitch, and a narrow pentagon in front of them denying the centre. That left space on the flanks, where Arsenal’s full-backs would normally operate.
White is pretty good on the ball for a defender but you probably don’t want him orchestrating your whole attack. If the only space Bayern were going to allow Arsenal was out wide, Odegaard wanted to be the guy out there pulling the strings in possession. As soon as the build-up began, White jogged backwards up the sideline to make room for Arsenal’s best passer to rotate into the full-back space.
Their position swap sent a couple more players in motion. Saka tucked into the half-space, completing the wide triangle by taking up Odegaard’s usual attacking position. Kai Havertz, the centre-forward, sagged toward the same side to show for a line-breaking pass. That gave Arsenal a wide overload — four attacking players outnumbering three nearby defenders — and put their most creative player on the ball.
It’s important to point out here that rotation isn’t just about switching spots so players can get on the ball in unusual places. The main benefit is what happens off the ball during the switch, as defenders scramble to figure out their new assignments. Rotations are often designed to drag specific players out of position, opening some space the attack has a plan to exploit.
The unlucky victim in this game was Konrad Laimer, the left half of Bayern’s defensive midfield pair. When Odegaard got around the pointy edges of Bayern’s press, it was Laimer’s job to shift out wide to stop him. But each time play swung back around toward Arsenal’s left side and Odegaard started to drift into midfield again, Laimer had to turn back inside and run 30 yards to protect the middle of the pitch.
Advertisement
Odegaard toyed with Laimer by carrying the ball up the right flank, drawing him out, then passing back to a centre-back, sending Laimer back inside. He repeated this three times until Laimer, who was tired or maybe just annoyed, didn’t bother to close down. Left in enough space to pick his pass, Odegaard took advantage of Arsenal’s overload on the right to play Saka in behind for Arsenal’s first goal.
Most rotations aren’t a simple one-time switch. Attackers will wander back and forth like this, not fully in one position or the other, to prolong those moments of indecision as the opponent adjusts to different looks. It may not be until the second or third try that the rotating players find a situation they like but, as long as they have the ball, they can keep rotating and unsettling the defence.
Watch almost any high-level game and you’ll see some central midfielder ducking outside the other team’s block while his full-back and winger interchange roles in front of him, testing opponents with wide rotations.
Toni Kroos, to pick a prominent example, loves to rotate out to Real Madrid’s left flank while Ferland Mendy probes the channels on either side of Vinicius Junior. They did that a lot against Manchester City, sometimes to deadly effect.
Even in that game where Marsch complained about the USMNT’s wide rotations, they had a lot of success scrambling Mexico’s defence by pulling Reyna deep while Christian Pulisic tucked inside and Antonee Robinson got up the wing.
But Marsch was right, too, that wide rotations can cause headaches for the attacking side. They can leave players in unfamiliar roles — it’s not crazy to think that maybe you’d rather have your best attacking midfielder in midfield and a defender defending instead of making striker runs. Plus if you’re not careful, the same confusing transitions between shapes that mix up opponents can sometimes leave holes in your own side in possession.
Not long after Arsenal’s first goal, they tried the same wide rotation again: Saka on the wing, White running an attacking channel and Odegaard dribbling around the edge of Bayern’s defence, sniffing around for a through ball. This time, though, Laimer got over in time to make the stop, and the result was nearly disastrous for Arsenal.
Bayern didn’t wind up converting that counter-attack, but by forcing Arsenal to twist themselves into unusual shapes, they managed to escape London with a vital 2-2 draw. Constant wide rotations — even smartly executed ones by an elite positional play side — won’t always win the day.
But hey, at least we got to see a centre-back play as a striker.
