Analysis
Why are all the strikers massive again?
Detailing the reasons for and ramifications of the jumbo-sized centre-forward trend
https://scoutedftbl.com/why-all-the-strikers-massive-again/
The evolution of the 21st-century striker is documented, unsurprisingly, in books about tactics.
In The Mixer, Michael Cox writes that the old-school Premier League archetype of the centre-forward, “a tall, strong number-9 who remained in the penalty box and thrived on crosses”, eventually gave way to technical, hybrid strikers like Wayne Rooney, Carlos Tévez, Robin van Persie, Harry Kane, and even false nines like Roberto Firmino, who represented the antithesis to centre-forward orthodoxy.
Similarly, in Inverting the Pyramid, Jonathan Wilson describes how pure ”poachers” in the mould of Filippo Inzaghi and young Michael Owen were replaced by strikers who’d combine multiple traditional centre-forward archetypes in one. “The best modern forwards,” Wilson writes, “have at least an element of universality and – crucially – they have to be able to function within the system.” The age of the goal-hanging big striker was over; the time of the nine-and-a-half had come.
Today, the picture looks rather different. Most of the Premier League clubs challenging for titles and for Champions League qualification all possess, or are targeting, big, physical strikers. At the time of writing, Manchester City have Erling Haaland; Arsenal have bagged Viktor Gyökeres; Hugo Ekitiké is in Liverpool, signing a contract; Newcastle United are just about holding onto Alexander Isak; Liam Delap is settling in at Chelsea. What’s more, almost all the hyped young striker talents on the market are physical unicorns. Benjamin Šeško, Nick Woltemade, Samu Aghehowa, Emanuel Emegha, Tolu Arokodare, and Promise David are all 6’4” and above, and combine their height and strength with great mobility, if not blistering pace.
Most of these strikers aren’t known for their technical refinement in possession, either. Though their passing and link up play remains raw at best, buying clubs seem unperturbed. While it won’t much bother David Moyes, Everton’s new 6’5” signing Thierno Barry is a prime example: he possesses great physicality, off-ball intelligence, and dribbling, but completed just 8.1 passes p90 last season, and his first touch and weight of pass remain very inconsistent.
So what’s going on here? Why are big, physical strikers who spend most of their time stretching backlines and attacking the box en vogue again, decades after they were phased out?
The answer may lie in tactical trends over the past five years and emerging patterns in player development. Using stats, stills, and conversations with a few experts, I set out to investigate.d out more
The new centre-forward ‘meta’
As Jake discussed in his introduction to the Power Forward archetype, the game’s physicality has grown over the past six years. With every passing season, the fastest players get faster, while all players are tasked with more ‘High-Intensity Actions’. As a result, Jake notes, big clubs target physical profiles to fill the No.9 spot.
Tiago Estêvão, currently Famalicão’s Head of Recruitment and Performance Analysis and formerly a Technical Scout at AC Milan, believes this is a case of tactical environments and player skillsets shaping each other. “It’s a self-fulfilling system,” Tiago told me, “where with the ‘athletification’ of football, even at top-level, elite teams, you have big teams prioritising physical characteristics for their No.9s. You want tall, fast guys in the Haaland/Šeško mould of fast and tall, strong freaks.” He cites Manchester City’s signing of Haaland as the key turning point for this change in striker profiles at big clubs.
Others working in recruitment at the top level echo this opinion. “If you look at the Premier League,” a scout at a Premier League club, who wished to stay anonymous, told me, “it's pretty remarkable how homogeneous body types are across the pitch now. We've figured out that actually football does have a real physical ideal across positions in general, but strikers are your most important player so you in a way need them to be ‘perfect’ if you want to be competitive”.
Fans of basketball may notice a familiar pattern. When the pace-and-space era of the NBA and the rise of the three-pointer pushed traditional ‘bigs’ to the periphery, new generations of ‘bigs’ who developed their three-point-shooting, ball-handling, and passing skills emerged. Now, ‘small-ball’ experiments are outnumbered by double-big lineups in the playoffs. It’s intuitive to guess that the striker position in football is going through something similar. What’s better than a 5’9” striker who can link up play and facilitate final-third passing? A 6’3” striker who can link up play and facilitate final-third passing.
But here’s where the story gets more interesting: strikers aren’t just bigger in 2025, they also play the game rather differently. For starters, strikers in the Big Five Leagues complete fewer passes now than at the beginning of the decade.
Plus, shots and touches in the box represent a larger proportion of strikers’ overall involvements today, with their ‘Shot Happiness’ and ‘Penalty-Area Proximity’ – to pilfer ideas from Jake – increasing as the 2020s have progressed.
These trends aren’t limited to younger physical strikers, or among strikers leading the line at smaller clubs, either. When you look at the season-by-season passing numbers of established strikers at top clubs who’ve often been used as lone strikers, the vast majority of them complete fewer passes every year. The exceptions here are Alexander Isak, whose teams scaling in quality and style have increased his volume, and Harry Kane, whose numbers went up last season after years of decline. Nevertheless, the pattern is clear: every year, strikers at big clubs become less involved in link-up play.
Does this represent a return of the old-school striker that Cox referred to: big, strong strikers who stay in the box? Let’s dig into the tactical context.
Man-marking, match-ups, and pinning
Surely the return of tall, physical strikers with great box presence has signalled the resurgence of crosses and long balls, of pumping it at the big guy’s head? Well, no, not really. Over the past five seasons, teams’ ratios of crosses to total passes in the Big Five Leagues have wavered slightly, with a small downward trend, while their ratios of long balls to total passes have fallen to a small extent. But as we’ll discuss later, teams are certainly playing more direct, just not through the air.
Plus, less of the game takes place in the air now, in general. In the 2020-21 season, the average Big Five League side contested 31.32 aerial duels per game; in 2024-25, they contested 27.15.
The answers lie in what teams do out of possession. I spoke with The Athletic’s Jon Mackenzie on this. “One of the biggest tactical evolutions of the last half-decades,” Jon says, “has come out of possession. Where man-marking had all but died out by around the early 2010s, we saw a resurgence of man-to-man ideas as the decade wore on because teams out-of-possession were increasingly less happy to allow the opposition to possess the ball without pressure.”
This in turn informs how teams attempt to pry open defences. “As this man-orientation became more prevalent,” he continues, “possession teams were incentivised to progress the ball through different means than simply short passing, one of which was playing direct. Because teams were pressing high and leaving their defenders one-on-one against forwards, bringing in strikers who could compete in duels had obvious upsides. So through time, we started seeing striker profiles evolving in that direction.”
Twitter’s resident striker expert, @sthsthburner, known as just ‘Seth’ or ‘Burner’, also notes the influence of out-of-possession trends. “An increase in man-to-man marking,” Burner says, “means hoofing it to a strong outlet or a channel runner is often the easiest or the best route, better still if they're a one-on-one or carrying threat to boot.”
Clearly, the proliferation of man-marking intuitively leads to strikers’ involvements in a game revolving around matchups and one-on-ones. However, interestingly enough, the numbers suggest that strikers don’t contest more one-on-one ‘duels’ on the ball. Strikers contest fewer aerial duels every passing season, while their one-on-one dribbling numbers fell noticeably hard last season. Teams aren’t pumping it to the big man up top more, or letting the striker ‘cook’ against centre-backs off the dribble.
Look at Robert Lewandowski’s positioning here when Bayern Munich aggressively press Barcelona’s build-up man-to-man.
Playing on the shoulder of the last defender, even slightly offside, Lewandowski pins back Bayern’s backline, creating either an option in behind if Barça decide to go direct, or space between Bayern’s midfield and backline if Barça attempt to play through the press. He’ll occasionally drop back and drag a defender with him when playing a one-touch layoff pass or heading the ball into space…
…but positioning himself on the last line very much remains the default, and Barça’s midfielders and wingers receive between the lines more, rather than their striker.
Haaland, who completed just 8.4 passes p90 last season, represents an extreme in how physically-gifted strikers are tasked with stretching backlines and occupying defenders to help their teams score, even in a high-possession system. In addition to positioning himself on the last line, he consistently sticks to the far-side of the play and vacates space, occupying defenders due to his physical and goalscoring threat. He doesn’t offer himself as an option, but still facilitates passing play around him.
Clearly, pinning back defenders becomes increasingly important in a new tactical environment, and people within the game recognise it, too. “The key for us with [our striker],” the anonymous Premier League scout says, “is his ability to be an outlet for us and his ability and willingness to make the runs that stretch the backline. His ability to drop in and play is respectable enough that you have to track him, but that makes that spin and run more potent.”
Recent trends in possession may also emphasise the value of pinning backlines and creating space. As Burner notes, the resurgence of prolific No.10s and touchline wingers necessitates strikers pinning backlines, creating targets for through-balls, and creating space for cut-backs. A mix of man-marking, the return of creative No.10s and touchline wingers, and the rise of goalscoring No.10s, he says, means there’s “more value in an outlet up top pinning the backline for them to arrive late to the box or even creating central spaces for cutbacks and hitting those cutbacks themselves.” In the age of front fives in possession and big, rich sides stacking attacking quality together, the guys up top prosper with more specific roles.
In this tactical environment, physical profiles are also especially well-suited to turning possession into goals. When a striker like Haaland attacks from the far-side of the ball, matchups become all the more crucial. With opponents setting up tight, compact blocks when the ball reaches the defensive third, teams tend to attack around defences rather than through them, as Liam Tharme noted for The Athletic - they progress the ball with diagonal passes out wide and then back inside to create shots. A striker on the wrong side of the defender manoeuvring his way towards the ball has to make the best use of his physical prowess and/or his off-ball guile. Haaland’s goal against Arsenal in City’s 1-5 loss provides an example: he outmuscles and outjumps William Saliba, which is no small feat.
This is Billy Carpenter’s ‘Ethan Pinnock test’. When a new generation of physically, mentally, and technically-gifted centre-backs form the spine of low-blocks and mid-blocks, “physical battles become paramount”. Strikers are tasked with creating mismatches, with strength, jumping, speed, and off-ball tricks, en route to attacking the back post.
Plus, the growing prominence of transitions is playing a key role, too. This season, in comparison to 2020-21, teams get on the ball slightly less in the middle third and progress up the pitch more quickly, especially in the attacking third. These differences may not be large but they represent the acceleration of a trend that’s been underway since the mid-2010s.
Naturally, a side hitting the opposition on the counter-attack requires a fast or aerially-dominant outlet to pump the ball to. “You can be a more traditional target man who the ball sticks to or more one who stretches the play,” the anonymous scout says, “but ultimately if you are looking to be breaking in transition, you can't be coming too deep and looking to get involved. Physicality helps here because I want my striker affecting the back line with his physical skills, making things difficult for them.”
Lastly, as Tiago noted in our conversation, two other early-2010s trends continue to shape the physicality of centre-forward profiles: pressing demands, and the increasing reliance on set-pieces to create shots. Strikers win the ball themselves less often now than at the beginning of the decade – doing so 0.96 times p90 on average, a slight decrease from 1.1 in 2020-21 – due to many high presses retreating into midfield blocks, but strikers are still tasked with intense off-ball work to usher opposition build-ups out wide.
Tactical systems on the pitch reveal one side of the story. What happens in academies and coaching set-ups, unbeknownst to outsiders, adds further nuance.
Specialists and player development
Take a look through the names of all the hyped-up young strikers linked with big moves this summer, then look up their height. You'll find most, if not all, are 6'1" or above. Meanwhile, slightly undersized strikers - even the 5'10" Loïs Openda - rarely find their way to the headlines.
The anonymous scout notes that improvements in player development are allowing young, physically gifted strikers level-up their technical skillsets - meaning technicality is no longer the domain of the diminutive. “Essentially I think it's because we are just getting better at developing well-rounded footballers,” he says. “In the past players who were both technically gifted and physically gifted were unicorns. I think we've just begun to understand how to develop more of them”. He also adds that smaller, technical strikers are moved “to the periphery”.
Meanwhile, Tiago asserts that emerging striker profiles at the highest level are a result of tactical trends allowing unique physical profiles to progress further than they otherwise would - which then gives them a platform for technical improvement. “You have these guys who,” Tiago says, “years back, wouldn't ever reach a top team cause they'd only fit relegation football, reach a top team and do so early. And then presumably that increases your chances of technical development under elite coaches and conditions.” Many strikers nearing two metres tall may not turn into Harry Kane, but they can at the very least stop being liabilities with the ball. Šeško perhaps represents one such example.
Consequently, in a game previously defined by the increasing prominence of ‘generalists’, specialist strikers who thrive because of their divinely-ordained physical skillsets get a major head start. “Basketball used to have the concept of a ‘tweener’,” the unnamed scout says, “someone who wasn't a 4 or a 5, and it was a real negative term and that's how I feel about centre-forwards. If you’re a striker who doesn't always perform as a nine and we see you do alright out wide and no one is super sure what you are, then in my mind you are 100% a winger.”
Many of us have broad ideas about the history of football tactics. Some consider it a linear story of ‘development’ - from archaic kick-and-rush football to sophisticated press-and-possess tactics. Others think tactics move in circles; the 2-3-5 formation becomes dominant, is slowly replaced by formations with more defenders like the 5-3-2, which in turn is supplanted by top sides forming the 2-3-5 shape in possession. The famed pyramid is inverted and then re-inverted to fit new contexts. It’s easy to consider these top-level striker trends as similar.
But, crucially, the current dominant profile is inextricably linked to the tactical undercurrents that created the conditions for it, and must be viewed in its own terms. Even if strikers like Haaland and Barry don’t pass the ball much, their participation in their teams’ possession sequences, creating space for their teammates with carefully-considered positioning and physical engagement, is fundamental. Even if these strikers don’t create shots for themselves at the end of every possession, they certainly help their teammates pry open defences, in transition or against a settled block. To return to Wilson’s description of ‘the best modern forwards’, the new crop of strikers may not show the same ‘universality’, but certainly ‘function within the system’.
Although big strikers are the dominant force, it’s not all over for the little guy. They continue to flourish in front twos alongside a bigger striker, with Lautaro Martinez and Julian Alvarez key examples. Additionally, as Jon observed, big sides this pre-season and in the Club World Cup are experimenting with situational front-twos, thus pinning and occupying backlines in new ways.
Every tactical trend has a counter. As the pyramid slowly re-inverts, positional requirements will change with it, and the undersized striker might just become an undervalued commodity again soon. As someone who’s 5’7” on a good day, I know which profile I’m rooting for.
