The best player on Earth right now, arguably, is Barcelona’s right-winger. It’s arguable, too, that Arsenal’s, Chelsea’s, Manchester City’s, Manchester United’s and – up until this summer – Liverpool’s right-winger are all better than their left.
Scroll through the most valuable players in the world on Transfermarkt, and on the right, you’ll be spoiled for choice: Lamine Yamal heading up the list ahead of Michael Olise, Desire Doue, Bukayo Saka, and new Real Madrid man, Yan Diomande. Transfermarkt actually values the top 10 right-wingers in the world right now to be a full £200 million more valuable than the top 10 on the left.
It begs the question of why there’s such a difference between the two roles – which should surely be mirrored.
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The dearth of world-class left-wingers has something to do with maths
Let’s start with the very basics. Most left-wingers are right-footed attackers who cut in on their favoured foot to attack the goal: it’s been that way ever since the likes of Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho revolutionised the game in the 2000s, but has a lot to do with players like Thierry Henry popularising the notion that an attacker in the opposite half-space to their favoured foot has more of the goal to aim at.
Estimates of how many players are left-footed fluctuate wildly, from 10 to 25 per cent – meaning that the vast majority of footballers on Earth prefer to use their right foot. From that, one may deduce that surely, there should be more quality left-wingers than right-wingers?
It’s not quite that simple, however. Think of the maths.
Imagine you’re coaching an academy team with five young attackers, who can all carry the ball, beat a defender, pick a pass and strike a ball with venom. Statistically, only one of them will be a left-footer. It simply makes sense to play the left-footer on the right wing, because he can do something the others can’t: cut inside on his natural foot.
Right-footers thus end up elsewhere. Had Eden Hazard, Neymar, Jamal Musiala or Florian Wirtz been left-footed, they would have almost exclusively played on the right wing growing up – but because they’re both right-footed, they’ve played plenty of football at No.10. Even a more physical profile like Jude Bellingham could have been developed as a right-winger, had he favoured his left foot.
By the time a left-footed attacker makes it in senior football, he has probably spent most of his development in the right-wing funnel. He knows that position better than anyone on the pitch – but having played his entire life with a touchline over his right shoulder, he may lack the 360-degree awareness that a right-footer may have had from having played a handful of attacking positions in his development.
It seems strange to imagine someone like Arjen Robben or Mohamed Salah regularly playing centrally, for example – but while Alexander Isak or Marcus Rashford have several of the same traits (speed, movement, finishing), the latter two have played as centre-forwards a lot more than the former. Their preferred foot has something to do with that.
There’s certainly a perception, too, around what we expect from left-footed players. We expect lefties to be naturally more creative – they certainly look more graceful to the naked eye to some people – and that almost certainly has something to do with the fact that we just don’t see them very often. There’s a case, too, that left-footed right-wingers grow up in a right-footed world, and thus have to find solutions that right-footers will never have to.
And then there’s the excitement of finding ‘the next Lionel Messi’ from those bringing the next generation through. If you have a mercurial left-footed attacker in your academy – whether that’s Martin Odegaard or Ryan Gauld – there will be an effort to ensure a pathway: you’ve found the most valuable commodity in the game, after all.
The Barcelona side that gave Messi his platform has become so influential that dribbly midfielders and ball-playing centre-backs have both been prioritised in youth football over the last decade – to the detriment of several other roles in football. The role of a traditional playmaker has been phased out, with chance creation now mostly generated from a high press. Box-to-box midfielders have become rarer, as teams search for specialists.
And specialised right-footed left-wingers have usually either moved up front or into midfield, depending on their physicality and finishing – while players like Morgan Rogers and Junior Kroupi play behind a No.9, rather than straight from the left.
The lack of world-class left-backs
Thanks in part to that Barcelona side, we have more midfield profiles in the modern game than we know what to do with. A top-level midfielder with intensity can play right-back these days – just ask Arne Slot last season or Declan Rice over the World Cup – whether they’re inverting or overlapping.
To highlight the maths once more, how many left-footed right-backs have you ever seen, compared to the other way around? Well, if fewer than 25 per cent of players really are left-footed, there’s a fair chance that the average youth team doesn’t even have a leftie in its back four.
And if this imaginary team really does have a left-footed left-back, capable of offering good support to the left-winger ahead of him, the chances of him being good at defending, too, are slim. Besides, even those left-backs who were world-class going forward and simply fine in defence – Bukayo Saka, Gareth Bale, even Alphonso Davies for Canada – usually get moved further up the pitch. Left-back is seen as one of the last priorities of any manager, despite how much world-class full-backs can elevate your XI.
Coaches are simply picking from a much bigger pool when it comes to right-backs: that’s reflected in the lack of genuinely world-class left-backs at the top level. Just in English football, Gareth Southgate’s golden generation was defined by its talent at right-back, with the likes of Kyle Walker, Kieran Trippier, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Reece James all fighting for a berth. The left full-back spot was all Luke Shaw’s if he was fit: Ben Chilwell’s, if he could make a case for it, and by the end, Trippier’s.
But the game has changed significantly, and so many teams don’t attack with Roberto Carlos-style full-backs anymore. That’s partly down to increased physicality in the modern game, demanding more of what players are physically capable of – but it’s also down to tactical shifts. Teams prefer to invert full-backs, or leave them at the back for building play. Wingers are expected to hold the width a bit more instead. Even the likes of Riccardo Calafiori and Nico O’Reilly – who really are attack-minded left-footed left-backs – aren’t there to support their left-winger: often, the left-winger is there to hold the width for them to attack the box.
Which brings us to the left-wingers thriving in the modern game, and their constant behind them.
Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Bradley Barcola are lucky enough to play with arguably the best left-back in the world in Nuno Mendes. Vinicius Junior’s best football at Real Madrid arguably coincided with Ferland Mendy’s. Sadio Mane and Luis Diaz both played best alongside Andrew Robertson. Raphinha and Marcus Rashford both benefited from Alejandro Balde, Rafael Leao was world-class alongside Theo Hernandez, and Kingsley Coman was at his best with Alphonso Davies behind him. Cristiano Ronaldo had Marcelo, Hazard had Cesar Azpilicueta, Neymar had Jordi Alba, and Franck Ribery had David Alaba. Look at Ronaldinho and Carlos, or Henry and Ashley Cole.
Jeremy Doku has sparkled at times, and both Phil Foden and Leroy Sane were left-footed left-wingers holding width – but the right-wingers always shone more for Guardiola’s Manchester City. Arsenal have had consistent right-backs in Ben White, then Jurrien Timber, while the left has been somewhat of a problem position, with arguably their last world-class left-wing option, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, having Kieran Tierney to work with behind him – while even Saka and Sead Kolasinac offered a solid overlap. Even Matt Targett and Ben Davies were solid Premier League-level players, there to provide a service for Jack Grealish and Son Heung-min, respectively: there are simply fewer and fewer of those bombing left-backs around these days.
That’s not to suggest that any of those left-wingers wouldn’t have made it without a left-back behind them to support. But it feels like the current generation of left-wingers are already at a disadvantage to their predecessors, when the standard and profile of left-back has changed so dramatically over the last decade.
And that’s not even to mention the obvious: if top-level left-backs are in such scarcity, it’s no wonder that the average right-winger looks so much better. The average left-winger is up against a right-back who, statistically speaking, fought off much better competition.
If Paris Saint-Germain value Barcola to be worth over €100m, there’s a good reason for that. If Arsenal decide not to pursue an alternative to Vinicius Jr, that may well be because there are so few game-changers in that position in world football. If Nico Williams becomes a nine-figure transfer, that’s maybe down to how few of his contemporaries are on his level. If Juventus charge more for Kenan Yildiz than RB Leipzig did for Diomande, it’s not because of talent; it’s because of scarcity. And perhaps, in a roundabout way, the cheapest way to sign a world-class left-winger is to sign a left-back who can improve what you already have.
Because strangely, world-class left-wingers have almost become a more precious profile than the Palmers and Sakas on the opposite side – despite all the odds. Does football need to evolve to produce more superstar left-wingers?