The shirt said 9. On 25 November 1953 that was more or less the whole of England's plan for Nándor Hidegkuti: find the man in the number 9 shirt, put the centre-half on him, and wait for him to turn up in the penalty area the way centre-forwards always had. Mostly, he was somewhere else. He was back in midfield, collecting the ball and feeding it on, and Hungary won 6-3 at Wembley.
The idea has a name now, the false 9, and it tends to get filed under Lionel Messi. It is older than that. Its family tree runs through Vienna, Budapest, Manchester, Rome and Barcelona, and one branch belongs to a football association that was beaten by it twice in six months and went on picking its team by committee.
What a false 9 does
A traditional centre-forward stands between the two central defenders and gives them something to mark. A false 9 starts in the same place and then walks away from it, into the space in front of the defence, to take the ball.
That hands the defenders a choice with no comfortable answer. Follow him, and they open a gap behind them for the wingers and the midfielders to run into. Stay put, and he receives the ball facing forward, in the one area of the pitch nobody has been told to guard.
The role asks for two things. It needs a forward who can take the ball with his back to goal and move it on quickly. And it needs team-mates who will run beyond him into the space he has emptied. Without the runners, a false 9 is a team with nobody in the box.
Vienna got there first
Austria's side of the early 1930s, the Wunderteam, played a passing game under the coach Hugo Meisl, and its centre-forward did not behave like one. Matthias Sindelar was nicknamed Der Papierene, the Paper Man, for his slight build, and the Irish Times has called him a kind of 1930s prototype false 9. He captained the side at the 1934 World Cup, where Austria went out 1-0 to the hosts Italy in the semi-final (FIFA; the Irish Times).
Wembley, 25 November 1953
Hungary came to London as Olympic champions, coached by Gusztáv Sebes. Hidegkuti wore number 9 and played behind his own forwards. UEFA's obituary of him credits him with patenting the deep-lying centre-forward role, withdrawing so the two inside forwards could push on and feeding the attack from behind it. UEFA's history of that team says he drew his marker with him and left the space for everybody else. FourFourTwo's account has England's centre-half, Harry Johnston, detailed to mark a centre-forward who kept leaving. England's plan for a number 9 who would not stand still had roughly the authority of a traffic warden beside an empty parking space.
Hidegkuti scored a hat-trick. Hungary won 6-3, and England had been beaten at home by a side from outside the British Isles for the first time (UEFA; FIFA).
Six months later England went to Budapest for the return and lost 7-1 at the Népstadion on 23 May 1954, Hidegkuti scoring again (the Hungarian Football Federation). It remains the heaviest defeat in the history of the England team (the National Football Museum).
The club that copied it, and the committee that did not
The first English side to take the lesson seriously was not England. It was Manchester City's reserve team.
Les McDowall, the Manchester City manager, tried a Hidegkuti-style deep centre-forward with the reserves, who went 26 matches unbeaten with it, then moved it into the first team for 1954-55 with Don Revie in the role (Manchester City's own club history; Biteback Publishing's history of the side tells it the same way). It became the Revie Plan. Manchester City reached the FA Cup final with it in 1955 and won the FA Cup with it in 1956.
The England team, meanwhile, was being picked by a committee. Walter Winterbottom managed England from 1946 to 1962 without ever having sole control of selection. A Football Association selection committee chose the side, and that only ended when Alf Ramsey made total control of team selection a condition of taking the job (FourFourTwo; the Professional Footballers' Association).
We should declare an interest before the verdict. This site carried a short glossary entry on the false 9 for two months before anyone got round to writing this page, so we are not in a strong position to lecture anybody on speed.
Even so. Hidegkuti gave English football the most expensive free lesson it has ever had, 6-3 at Wembley and 7-1 in Budapest, and the Football Association's response was to leave a committee in charge of picking the centre-forward for the best part of a decade, while Manchester City's manager had the idea working inside two seasons, starting with his reserves. The governing body of English football was out-thought by a reserve team.
Rome, 2006-07: Totti drops off the front
Luciano Spalletti took Francesco Totti, AS Roma's captain, pushed him to the front of the team and let him drop off it, with nobody else standing where a striker would (ESPN; Goal).
Totti scored 26 Serie A goals in 2006-07 and won the European Golden Shoe as the top league scorer in Europe (ESPN; AS Roma).
The Bernabéu, 2 May 2009
Messi's version started the day before a Clásico. Messi has said Pep Guardiola called him into his office and told him that he and his assistant, Tito Vilanova, had thought about him playing as a false 9, with Samuel Eto'o and Thierry Henry out wide, and that he would not stay up front but come back and join the midfield (Goal, interviewing Messi).
Xavi's account is that Guardiola knew the Real Madrid centre-backs would not come out to press Messi when he dropped, which left Barcelona with a spare man in midfield, and that Guardiola kept telling his players "that's where the game is" (Sports Illustrated, from Xavi's interview with the Daily Mail).
Barcelona won 6-2 at the Santiago Bernabéu. Messi scored twice (ESPN; FC Barcelona).
Playing further back did nothing to his scoring. In the calendar year 2012 Messi scored 91 goals, a Guinness world record, passing the 85 Gerd Müller scored in 1972 (FC Barcelona; Guinness World Records).
Kyiv, 1 July 2012: a country without a striker
Spain went further and left the striker out. In the Euro 2012 final Vicente del Bosque started Cesc Fàbregas in the false 9 role he had already played against Italy in the group stage, with Fernando Torres on the bench (AFP, via Gulf News; Miguel Delaney's match report).
Spain beat Italy 4-0 at the Olympic Stadium, the most one-sided final in the history of the European Championship, and added it to Euro 2008 and the 2010 World Cup (Associated Press; UEFA).
The striker got his goal anyway. Torres came off the bench and scored the third, and Juan Mata, another substitute, scored the fourth (Associated Press; AFP).
The false 9, a dated record
- 1931 to 1934: Matthias Sindelar, Austria, under Hugo Meisl. The prototype.
- 25 November 1953: Nándor Hidegkuti, Hungary, 6-3 against England at Wembley. Hat-trick.
- 23 May 1954: Hidegkuti's Hungary, 7-1 against England in Budapest. England's heaviest defeat.
- 1954-55 and 1955-56: Don Revie, Manchester City, the Revie Plan. FA Cup runners-up, then FA Cup winners.
- 2006-07: Francesco Totti, AS Roma, under Luciano Spalletti. 26 Serie A goals, European Golden Shoe.
- 2 May 2009: Lionel Messi, Barcelona, under Pep Guardiola. Real Madrid 2-6 Barcelona, two goals.
- 2012: Lionel Messi, Barcelona. 91 goals in a calendar year.
- 1 July 2012: Cesc Fàbregas, Spain, under Vicente del Bosque. Spain 4-0 Italy, Euro 2012 final.
Who owns it
Our claim is that Hidegkuti owns it. Sindelar was first on the record as it stands, but even the Irish Times calls him a prototype. Messi has the numbers, 91 goals in a single year among them, and by 2009 he was playing a role that already had a history. Hidegkuti is the one who took the idea to the ground least ready for it and won by three goals.
He was 31 that afternoon at Wembley. Hungary's number 9, standing in midfield.
Sindelar, Hidegkuti or Messi: who really owns the false 9?
Sourcing: UEFA, FIFA, the Hungarian Football Federation, the National Football Museum, Manchester City, Biteback Publishing, FourFourTwo, the Professional Footballers' Association, the Irish Times, ESPN, AS Roma, Goal, Sports Illustrated, FC Barcelona, Guinness World Records, AFP and the Associated Press.