Death of the Number 10?

[steveeeeeeeee]

Rui Costa has been giving interviews to the Portuguese press as its 10 years since he retired (I was at the game, seems like yesterday, time flies).

Anyway, he said this,

"People love the number 10, Today, that style of street football is over, everything is mechanical."

This is nonsense, isn't it? Just off the top of my head in the premiership you have Christian Erikssen (absolute classic number 10), Eden Hazzard, Kevin de Bruyne, Juan Mata (again, as number 10 as a number 10 gets), Mezut Ozil. I can only imagine Rui Costa's idea of a number 10 relates to not running on the pitch, never tracking back and smoking 2 packs of cigs a day, yet still being an amazing player. From that perspective, yeah, he was probably the last.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Costa looked kind of tactically obsolete 20 years ago. People had started to run around a lot more even then and that was becoming problematic.

[Satchmo Distel]

Players who don't have to track back or press probably are extinct at very top level. The trend probably started with Sacchi at Milan.