Slow players

[Borracho]

Dalliance's mention of Ibrahimovic and Totti on the transfer window thread got me thinking of players who were/are talented, but move at the speed of a Michelangelo Antonioni movie.

I'll start with Ronald Koeman. Even in his PSV days under Guus Hiddink in the 1980s he was quite sluggardly. By the time he was a big star at Barcelona, he could barely move. He had enough know-how and positional sense to make sure he was exposed only infrequently, but whenever he was caught out, it was horrific to watch. He got absolutely murdered by Flemming Povlsen in the semi-final of Euro 92, and Povlsen was not exactly a speed merchant.

[Borracho]

Slow players

Pirlo's biggest problem that night was that Xavi ruthlessly sat on him for the entire match. Didn't give him an inch.

[Satchmo Distel]

Slow players

Carlos Valderrama.

Maradona in Italia 90.

[Geoffrey de Ste. Croix]

Slow players

Bobby Murdoch famously had all the pace of an overladen and stricken oil tanker but bossed Celtic's midfield during the 1960s golden era domestically as well as in Europe. So much so that Helenio Herrera said "Bobby Murdoch is my complete footballer."

[Etienne]

Slow players

Ian Harte. If he'd been as fast as his uncle he'd have been an exceptional player.

[Geoffrey de Ste. Croix]

Slow players

RE: Ronald Koeman. I love the stat that he has scored exactly the same amount of Eredivisie goals as Wim van Hanegem (126) and only 2 behind Marco van Basten. Yes, he did take the penalties and free kicks but it is still a phenomenal return for a player who was positioned as central defender/libero for most of his career.

[3 Colours Red]

Slow players

Maradona's an interesting one to bring up as we all know he used to have a decent lick of pace in him. I can only think of John Barnes who lost more speed more dramatically.

[ooh aah]

Slow players

Teddy Sheringham of course had a yard in his head.

[EIM]

Slow players

Laurent Blanc at Manchester United. Could have been as quick as fuck in his younger days for all I know, but in his last season it was as if he was playing bare-foot on a lego brick pitch.

[dalliance]

Slow players

It would be interesting to see how Ronald Koeman would prosper if he played today, now that there's no will anywhere to play anything like the orthodox sweeper role he mainly did.

That was the thing with proper sweepers; pace wasn't at all important whereas reading of the play was paramount. Armando Picchi, Inter's great Herrera-era liberal was very slow for example.

[jameswba]

Slow players

Nigel Clough was said, like Sheringham, to run the first yard in his head.

Mark Viduka was immobile rather than slow. Viktor Anichebe can often look as if he's playing with a permanent hamstring injury, though he can also be oddly effective.

[dalliance]

Slow players

Frank De Boer was another central defender / sweeper who was rather slow, but the first player that comes to mind here is Juan Roman Riquelme, hilariously bought to play as a flying winger by Barcelona.

[dalliance]

Slow players

Also interesting that all the players mentioned thus far (with the exception of Ian Harte) play centrally - defence, midfield or centre forward. It's much harder to think of slow full backs, wide midfielders or wingers.

Logic dictates that good teams have strong central spines but they evidently don't need to be quick, a trait that's more important for the wider, more peripheral positions.

[jameswba]

Slow players

I know it's lowering the tone from Koeman and De Boer but WBA occasionally played Graham Roberts as a sweeper. Well, they called him that ; he was the central one of a back three anyway.

He was safe enough in that role, but his lack of pace was always horribly exposed when he was part of an orthodox back four, as was that of his sometime centre-back partner Gary Strodder. See the two of them being ripped to shreds by Woking's Tim Buzaglo, for example.

[Anorak Smith]

Slow players

dalliance wrote: Also interesting that all the players mentioned thus far (with the exception of Ian Harte) play centrally - defence, midfield or centre forward. It's much harder to think of slow full backs, wide midfielders or wingers.

Logic dictates that good teams have strong central spines but they evidently don't need to be quick, a trait that's more important for the wider, more peripheral positions.

Does David Beckham enter that territory, not particularly pacey for a wide midfielder but made up for it with his delivery.

Chris Brunt is another in this mould, his left foot 'wand' makes up for his lack of pace at either left back or left midfield.

[Duncan Gardner]

Slow players

Chris Brunt has famously broken into a trot only once in his entire career, in Estonia when the hardcore fans wound him up at the dressing room door after a particularly insipid performance in a 4-1 defeat.

[jameswba]

Slow players

dalliance wrote: It's much harder to think of slow full backs, wide midfielders or wingers.

Yes, I'm sure we can all think of players in those positions who didn't strike us as being especially quick, or whose greatest asset wasn't their speed, but it's difficult to think of outright slow ones.

A tentative mention for Gareth Barry, though. Has often been said to lack pace, but played quite a bit for Villa (especially) as a left-back/left-sided midfielder.

[Anorak Smith]

Slow players

Kevin Campbell ran like he was wearing lego boots on a lego pitch.

Is it me or have West Brom got a penchant for slow players? Jonathan Greening, Champions League winner, is another who springs to mind.

[jameswba]

Slow players

Anorak Smith wrote:

It's much harder to think of slow full backs, wide midfielders or wingers.

Yes, I'm sure we can all think of players in those positions who didn't strike us as being especially quick, or whose greatest asset wasn't their speed, but it's difficult to think of outright slow ones.

Kevin Campbell

But he was a centre-forward. I always thought he was pretty quick when he started at Arsenal. He'd slowed down a lot by the time he got to WBA, but he was 34 then.

[Borracho]

Slow players

Carnivorous Vulgaris wrote: Paolo Maldini - though always brilliant - wasn't lightning-fast, was he? I know that the game now is faster than it was when he made his debut but I don't remember him leaving burn-marks on the field. He was such an intelligent player with outstanding positional sense that he rarely needed to sprint to keep up with his winger. I stand to be corrected on that, though.

Karel Poborsky tore Maldini apart at Anfield in Euro 96. Maldini wasn't exposed like that very often, but when it did happen, it tended to stick in your mind.

[nmrfox]

Slow players

Seen two very slow midfielders in recent years at Bramall Lane; Michael Tonge (who apparently is still trundling around at Stevenage) and Brian "the snail" Howard.

[Jah Womble]

Slow players

Berbatov. Sometimes you had to poke him with a stick to check that he was still alive.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Slow players

It would be interesting to see how Ronald Koeman would prosper if he played today, now that there's no will anywhere to play anything like the orthodox sweeper role he mainly did.

I don't think he would have had a professional career. certainly not outside holland. I think someone who was on the cusp of being too slow in the 1980's and getting by on intelligence, wouldn't have a hope in hell of playing today.

I appreciate that with modern training methods, diets, and specialized speed coaching, he would have been considerably faster, but even the slow players nowadays are still pretty exceptional athletes. Modern defenders only look slow because we are comparing them to the sub 11 second 100 yard runners that pepper every team, and teams are increasingly set up to play the ball into the path of players that are already running at top speed.

[hobbes]

Slow players

Jan Molby wasn't exactly a mover.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Slow players

Carnivorous Vulgaris wrote: Paolo Maldini - though always brilliant - wasn't lightning-fast, was he? I know that the game now is faster than it was when he made his debut but I don't remember him leaving burn-marks on the field. He was such an intelligent player with outstanding positional sense that he rarely needed to sprint to keep up with his winger. I stand to be corrected on that, though.

When maldini started out he was lightning fast, but that was a million years ago, and as the rest of football sped up, it gradually caught up with him and he didn't look so fast any more, and then by the end he was very old.

Something else to remember is that Italian football was played at near walking pace a lot of the time, so the speed you would see maldini doing on the pitch, frequently bore no relation to the speed he could actually do.