Europe’s two most dominant teams have set out an ominous stall at the beginning of the transfer window.
Manchester City have recruited Erling Haaland from Borussia Dortmund, while Liverpool are expected to announce the signing of Darwin Nunez from Benfica.
There’s certainly no room for complacency for the Premier League’s elite. Both teams were already impossibly good, and now they’ve each added one of the best young strikers in the world.
City and Liverpool certainly don’t intend to sit still and allow any other team to compete with them. What makes their signings so interesting, though, is the idea that they are pioneering football’s next tactical revolution.
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Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola have shown the world that you can play dominant attacking football without a traditional striker. Their success had many pundits wondering if the traditional number 9 was forever lost to the inverted wide attacker.
Now, it appears they are moving in a different direction. With Haaland at City, there is an element to which he is simply an excellent player who happens to be tall. However, City have been looking for presence up front for a while.
Last summer’s pursuit of Harry Kane and Cristiano Ronaldo spoke to this. Like Haaland, Kane is simply a good striker who anyone would want. What doesn’t get mentioned with regard to Kane is how big he is. At Euro 2020, he was the heaviest player. He never gets spoken of as a target man but Kane is 6-foot-1 and a physical monster.
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With the prevalence of pressing, the old fashioned target man could return to prominence as teams look to break the press quickly and relieve the pressure on them. If Haaland and Nunez succeed in the Premier League, they could set a trend for the next five years.
