Modern shirt numbers have increasingly become personilised. It's not uncommon for goalkeepers to wear 34s or strikers 3s as players pick numbers that mean something to them personally rather than their positions on the pitch (I think it was futre at west ham who traded his preferred shirt number with another player in return for a mansion).
And a lot of people hate this but what they ignore to do so is how little sense the 'classic' 1-11 numbering ever made.
For a start, it differed in every country. Argentina, Uruguay, Hungary, Italy and England all had set traditions of where the eleven numbers played which differed from each other. An englishman, a south american and an italian might all talk about no5s and no9s but they'd mean very different things, to the point that english commentators in early internationals had to explain what the numbers meant in the other team to the viewer.
Plus in each country it served a specific purpose, of showing each player their counterpart, which is no longer needed. In the 50s with little television footage you might need a number on the back to know your marker (indeed bristol city had some success in that time by simply swapping their players shirts, so a defender looking to mark the no. 9 would find him playing at left back and so be lost) but nowadays most footballers and fans know what kind of player van persie or vidic are without needing their numbers to tell them. And indeed know that fellaini, neville and arteta while they all played in the same position for us in recent years are very different players who demand different approaches. The days of the old italian man marking where every player lined up against their counterpoints based on shirt number alone are long gone, you train against your opposition based on them as individuals.
And more to the point the traditional english numbers just don't work for a 4-4-2 or a 4-5-1.
Your classic 4-4-2, in the 70s when it first became the mainstream after ramsey invented in for the 66 world cup, looked like this:
Which makes no sense. It should be
It isn't because shirt numbers were invented by herbert chapman in the 1920s when the standard formation was 2-3-5 (though chapman himself used and possibly invented the 3-4-3).
So it went.
Which makes sense for that formation but kept being used long after managers had withdrawn the number 8 and the two wingers into midfield and moved two of the midfielders back into centre backs.
The classic numbering system of the 70s to 90s only made sense in a formation that went out of vogue in the 1920s and none of us were even alive when played, ffs!
Harking back to it is valuing nostalgia over any logic or sense. It's proposed solely because someone else used it in the past and that's enough.
And a lot of people hate this but what they ignore to do so is how little sense the 'classic' 1-11 numbering ever made.
For a start, it differed in every country. Argentina, Uruguay, Hungary, Italy and England all had set traditions of where the eleven numbers played which differed from each other. An englishman, a south american and an italian might all talk about no5s and no9s but they'd mean very different things, to the point that english commentators in early internationals had to explain what the numbers meant in the other team to the viewer.
Plus in each country it served a specific purpose, of showing each player their counterpart, which is no longer needed. In the 50s with little television footage you might need a number on the back to know your marker (indeed bristol city had some success in that time by simply swapping their players shirts, so a defender looking to mark the no. 9 would find him playing at left back and so be lost) but nowadays most footballers and fans know what kind of player van persie or vidic are without needing their numbers to tell them. And indeed know that fellaini, neville and arteta while they all played in the same position for us in recent years are very different players who demand different approaches. The days of the old italian man marking where every player lined up against their counterpoints based on shirt number alone are long gone, you train against your opposition based on them as individuals.
And more to the point the traditional english numbers just don't work for a 4-4-2 or a 4-5-1.
Your classic 4-4-2, in the 70s when it first became the mainstream after ramsey invented in for the 66 world cup, looked like this:
2 - 5- 6- 3
7 - 4 -8 -11
10
9
7 - 4 -8 -11
10
9
Which makes no sense. It should be
2 -3 -4 -5
6 -7- 8- 9
10
11
6 -7- 8- 9
10
11
It isn't because shirt numbers were invented by herbert chapman in the 1920s when the standard formation was 2-3-5 (though chapman himself used and possibly invented the 3-4-3).
So it went.
2 -3
4-5-6
7-8-9-10-11
4-5-6
7-8-9-10-11
Which makes sense for that formation but kept being used long after managers had withdrawn the number 8 and the two wingers into midfield and moved two of the midfielders back into centre backs.
The classic numbering system of the 70s to 90s only made sense in a formation that went out of vogue in the 1920s and none of us were even alive when played, ffs!
Harking back to it is valuing nostalgia over any logic or sense. It's proposed solely because someone else used it in the past and that's enough.
