The free man: key piece of positional play
Every team that starts playing from its own goal looks for a footballer that nobody reaches in time. That free man is the great obsession of positional play. An 11 against 11 is not a one on one.
The answer lies in the distribution. An opponent that presses high rarely matches everyone, and the team in possession can add the goalkeeper to always have one extra man in its own half. From there the concept is born. In the build‑up phase, the stage when a team plays the ball out from the back, each pass looks for a teammate who can receive with time and space.
When that teammate appears on the other side of the pressing line, the move gains an advantage before the midfield. The free man is the player who receives without an opponent on top and with room to decide. His value lies in forcing a defender to leave his position to close him down, and that movement leaves another teammate free. It is created with numerical superiority.
Mechanisms to create the free man
The simplest is the numerical one, for example three against two in the first line. The positional one consists of placing the receiver behind the player who presses, and the qualitative one in leaving a better footballer in a one on one. All three pursue the same goal: for someone to receive with an advantage. There are mechanisms that repeat in any team that starts playing.
The centre‑back drives to draw a striker, the defensive midfielder moves to drag the and the pass reaches the teammate who has been left alone. When the circulation stalls, the ball goes back and the search starts again, often from the goalkeeper. The natural scenario for the free man is the ball‑out against an opponent that presses high. Against two forwards who match the two centre‑backs, the first line ends up in a two‑against‑two that complicates any clean pass.
Scenarios of playing out under pressure
To break that deadlock the build‑up that today bears the name Ricardo La Volpe became popular. The regulations also pushed in that direction. With the rule introduced in the 2019/20 season, the IFAB allows that on a goal kick the ball is in play without leaving the penalty area, and the goalkeeper’s teammates can receive it inside it. The change opened the way to new structures to create superiority next to the goal itself.
When the opponent presses the man, with each player glued to his counterpart, the free man usually reduces to one: the goalkeeper. It was the gamble of Gian Piero Gasperini’s Atalanta between 2016 and 2025. In the opponent’s build‑up, his team defended with individual marking and accepted the risk of being one on one across the whole pitch. The La Volpe build‑up was popularised by Argentine coach Ricardo La Volpe, who inserted the defensive midfielder between the two centre‑backs while the full‑backs stepped up a notch.
Evolution and contemporary examples
The three‑against‑two against two forwards makes it easier to find the free teammate. Its biggest showcase was Mexico’s national team at the 2006 World Cup, with Rafael Márquez as a versatile piece. The idea took hold in La Liga with Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona in the 2008/09 season. Sergio Busquets knew when to drop deeper alongside Gerard Piqué and Carles Puyol and when to stay in midfield to receive.
That movement turned the defensive midfielder into the team’s primary creator of free men, and the build‑up became fashionable in Spain. At Manchester City, Guardiola took the idea a step further back. Ederson, signed in 2017, acted for years in the build‑up as an extra centre‑back with his feet, and that presence gave the team numerical superiority in the first phase of construction. For many analysts, the modern goalkeeper is the team’s first free man.
Roberto De Zerbi turned it around at Brighton, dropping the double pivot and using the goalkeeper as a third centre‑back to invite the opponent to press higher. The more the press is stretched, the more space remains behind it, and the free man appears far from the ball, sometimes after a pass over the opponent’s first line.
From the early‑90s La Volpe style to today, the free man has dropped in height. First it was created by a defensive midfielder between the centre‑backs; later, the goalkeeper; and since the 2019 rule, a structure next to the area, with the centre‑backs inside it and two midfielders just in front, like the one De Zerbi used at Brighton. Who receives free has also changed. It is no longer always the defensive midfielder: it can be a full‑back who cuts inside, an open centre‑back or an inside midfielder who drops to receive.
What remains is the logic of marking an opponent with one player so that another is left alone, an idea very close to the third man.