Jean-Ricner Bellegarde of Wolverhampton Wanderers takes a corner during the Premier League match against Tottenham Hotspur at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on September 27, 2025. Photo / Getty Images
Hooray. Direct football is back. Get it forward quickly. No more tiki-taka or – as Sam Allardyce would have it – tippy-tappy. No more playing it out from the back. Stick it in the mixer. Play for corners. Heck, play for throw-ins. More excitement. More fun. More goals.
Except not.
Instead, the Premier League has regressed. It brings to mind a column written two decades ago by Jorge Valdano, the former Real Madrid coach and World Cup winner with Argentina, for the Spanish newspaper Marca. “Very intense, very collective, very tactical, very physical, very direct,” he wrote.
“But a short pass. Noooo. A feint? Noooo. A change of pace? Noooo. A one-two? A nutmeg? A backheel? Don’t be ridiculous.”
That was about a Champions League semifinal between Liverpool and Chelsea in 2005 when Valdano sniffily castigated the tactics used by Rafael Benitez and Jose Mourinho. It even became known as the “s*** hanging from a stick” piece because of a memorable, brutal comment made by Valdano, who later apologised for his language.
In essence, the former striker said football fans – especially in a stadium like Anfield – were so committed and “passionate” that they would claim it was a “work of art” even if it was the aforementioned stick that they were watching rather than a football match.
The Premier League 2025-26 is not that, far from it. But there has been a worrying celebration of more direct football this season – as if that is a good thing – and a gleeful declaration that this is how the game should be played. And even that it is more exciting. We are expected to laud players with long throws and swoon over those who block off opponents at corners.
When goals are scored, now the cameras are cutting to set-piece coaches in the technical area more than the managers. Arsenal fans have even honoured Nicolas Jover with a mural and delight in singing “set-piece again ole, ole”.
After Matty Cash struck from a well-worked Aston Villa corner routine against Manchester City on Sunday, the TV images were of set-piece coach Austin MacPhee in the dugout and not manager Unai Emery. Hours later, Tottenham Hotspur beat Everton 3-0 in a battle of the six-yard box.
The Americanisation of the Premier League has brought a slew of new US owners. Now we have coaches acting like it is the NFL, a sport obsessed by set-pieces, with their elaborate playbooks.
Arsenal are the league’s best team at present. They have scored 16 goals – nine from set-pieces, two from penalties and just five from open play. Fourteen teams have scored more open-play goals than Arsenal which, however good they are, does not feel right.
Little wonder that Telegraph Sport columnist Jamie Carragher has described Arsenal centre-half Gabriel Magalhães as the “most influential player in the league” right now. Why? Because he is the most effective at set-pieces.
Arsenal are a good team. But not all of it looks good on the eye, especially from lesser sides – can we really say a bout of head tennis or a scramble at a corner ending with the ball in the net is better than an intricate passing move? – and the statistics back this up.
Let’s take a few, starting with a rather relevant and damning one. Okay, so the claim is that football is more thrilling when it is more direct. Yet fewer goals have been scored this season – 241 at an average of 2.68 per game – than in any campaign since 2017-18.
Unsurprisingly, there is a far higher percentage of goals being scored from corners and the highest number of long passes in four years.
Worryingly, the amount of time the ball is actually in play – a key factor in the governing bodies’ thinking about value for money and entertaining fans – is at its lowest since 2022-23 at just 55 minutes at 12 seconds on average per game.
This is all the more surprising as games are lasting longer than ever, with VAR checks and referees encouraged to add on time. It is not unusual for matches to run beyond 100 minutes. But then neither is it unusual for teams to spend more than two minutes taking a corner.
Set-pieces also mean breaking up the flow of the game. Don’t we want fast, free-flowing football? Instead, it is more stop-start. More NFL-like.
So there we have it: fewer goals and less football. It could not, really, be clearer. It is not as entertaining.
In fairness, it had gone too far the other way. There, undoubtedly, was too much possession for possession’s sake with players becoming increasingly risk-averse. The most maddening thing of all was watching a winger square up to a fullback … and then play the ball back inside rather than take them on.
There was even a name for it: the horseshoe shape, a tactical drill with players moving the ball from one side of the pitch to the other as they kept possession. The aim was to probe for weaknesses and then try to play a killer pass through. In reality, it became more of an exercise in avoiding a risk by playing in front of the opposition.
It became football by numbers – or letters – with A passing to B who passes to C. And back again. We became obsessed by metrics such as pass completion which, really, meant nothing.
Goalkeepers playing out from the back, in an effort to break the press, became another bugbear – and not least because not many of them had the skills of Ederson. And so a goal would be cheaply given away because coaches tried to copy Guardiola but with inferior players.
Which brings us on to another thing: why do coaches all copy a trend, any trend, it seems? Where is the individuality in getting a team to play differently? The answer appears simple: a lack of bravery to swim against the tide. Arsenal are good at set-pieces? Then everyone has to try to copy that. Brentford at long throws? Ditto.
Some argue this is all levelling out the game – hence we see Bournemouth and Sunderland in the top four. As welcome as their presence is, that claim is a false one. They are effective at set-pieces, but that does not explain their results.
There needs to be a balance struck and the team that has led the way are the European champions: Paris St-Germain. They are quick, direct at times, and, tellingly, when their wingers get the ball they run at the defenders. They work hard, stretch the play and – still – play through midfield. Not many teams have their vast resources but that is the way modern football should be played.
Not a souped-up version of Stoke City under Tony Pulis.
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