EPL and UEFA Champions League: Where Have All the Midfielders Gone?

Last night Manchester United and Marseille met in the Last 16 of the UEFA Champions League. Truly, it was one of the worst games that the Champions League has ever produced. Neither side managed a clear cut chance on goal all night. Stifling tactics cannot be blamed—rather, the enemy on the night was poor players and specifically poor midfielders.

Leaving one to wonder—where have all the midfielders gone? It might sound like a mad question but given the state of the modern game it is one of the most pertinent.

Manchester United started off with a midfield triumvirate comprised of Darron Gibson, Michael Carrick and Darren Fletcher, while Nani and Wayne Rooney occupied the wide areas. Was it one of the worst midfields that Sir Alex Ferguson has ever fielded in Europe? Looking at the performance of the threesome it would be hard to argue against such an accusation.

Nani is not the kind of player who will ever know how to dictate the ebb and flow of a game. As a wide player, he is reliant on the services of others and feeds on balls into space that he can move onto rather than taking on the responsibility of initiating a move himself. To some extent, then, the Portuguese international is innocent of the charges being brought against United's midfield.

Similarly, Rooney and Berbatov are forwards and by definition will never dictate the intricacies of a football match.

However, Gibson, Fletcher and Carrick are all guilty of refusing to demand the ball from their team mates. In doing so, they indirectly dictated that United's defence played a fair amount of long and hopeful balls from the back.

The single most important thing for any central midfielder to remember—be he on Hackney Marshes or playing in the Camp Nou—is that they have to move towards the ball to receive it, while also moving into space.

One of the first things you learn playing football is to provide angles to receive the ball. In an ideal world, the player on the ball will have three options at the least. Two will be wide and one will offer a route down the middle.

The four players will form a rough diamond shape and as the ball moves this diamond will reform depending upon the situation. Think of Barcelona and all of those little triangles they always seem to find.

And this is football at its most basic. It's learned on the street, avoiding broken bottles, parked cars, bullies twice your age and lampposts. This is where ingenuity and imagination take hold, where cleverness beats physicality every time. One would almost have to wonder if it's coached out of players these days.

There is an unwritten rule in the English Premier League that a midfielder will not take responsibility and receive the ball if an opponent is within three or four yards of him. The exceptions to the rule are almost every Arsenal midfielder, Luka Modric and Paul Scholes.

On Wednesday night, Carrick, Gibson and Fletcher ran away from the ball, hid behind opponents or just didn't move at all. The end result was that United did not create any move of note in the whole game. Marseille, for their part, were just as bad if not worse.

It was a sad indication of the state of the game.

Here we are in the Last 16 of what is widely regarded as the greatest football competition on the planet and not only is the game rubbish, but neither side can string a couple of passes together either.

The most worrying aspect of all of this is that Marseille vs. Manchester United is a microcosm of what is affecting the game as a whole.

Over the last 20 years, skillful midfielders have been marginalised and replaced by physical athletes. The general move towards 4-2-3-1 as the formation of choice reflects this as the formation is built around maximising players with partial skill-sets.

In the days of yore, the formation of choice was 4-4-2. It is an incredibly adaptable formation and can be arranged to suit any occasion—but it does have one major draw back in that the two most important players in the system are the central midfielders. On top of that, the two wide midfielders must be able to attack and defend in equal measure. In a 4-2-3-1, these wide players are usually only utilised as support players to the striker.

For the system to be successful these central midfielders need to be "jack of all trades." They need to be schemers, dictators, enforcers, playmakers, warriors and above all else they need to be imbued with the deepest knowledge of how to keep the continuity of their team going.

This might sound like a lot for any one player to do, but they are the basics of midfield play and are learned on the street long before "coaching" ever takes its icy hold.

In this modern Jose Mourinho era, the 4-2-3-1 era, the game seems to lack the patience to allow these players to develop. Instead, players who have expertise in half-skill sets are utilised in their place.

The attraction for managers is that this reduces the coaching they have to employ. A player with a defensive midfield lean is allowed to specialise in that position while his attacking counterpart is also allowed to do the same.

In short, the manager does not have to waste time coaching the players to learn other skills and adapts them into the system that concentrates upon the skills they already have.

Think Javier Mascherano playing defensive midfield for Liverpool while Steven Gerrard played attacking midfield. Both of these players are brilliant in their respective positions but are extremely lacking when asked to play as conventional central midfielders. They simply don't have all the skills required to take on the task.

This might seem like a common sense approach by the manager, and it is—but it also diminishes the sport because the style of the game, health of the game and skill of the players is attenuated upon.

When you look back at the midfield greats, players who could do everything from the middle of the park, the list is almost endless.

Souness, MacKay, Whelan, Brady, Giles, Bremner, Wilkins, Robson, Rijkaard, Ancelotti, Socrates, Magath, Netzer—the list is long.

If you look around Europe today for midfielders capable of even coming near that exclusive list you have to think hard. Xavi and Iniesta jump straight out, then maybe Luka Modric, Cesc Fabregas and Bastian Schweinsteiger. After that you're really looking hard. Of those mentioned, Xavi really stands out in a class of his own and is without doubt the greatest midfielder of his generation.

Back in the '60s, '70s, '80s and even part of the '90s every team had a midfield general. Now you'd probably find it hard to come up with 11 generals across the game.

The sad news in all of this is that 4-2-3-1 is here to stay.

As a formation, it makes the most of players who specialise in one midfield position, but perhaps the biggest factor influencing the use of the system is the utilisation of only one forward.

Forwards are the most expensive players in the game. A top class 4-2-3-1 squad needs two to three strikers for the entire season. A manager using 4-4-2 needs at least four if not five strikers.

Economically, 4-2-3-1 will spend less on strikers than other formations—with that money being spent in midfield instead, where key players usually work out cheaper.

What all that adds up to is that 4-2-3-1 is a cheaper system to run than others. It's a system that finds foundation in players with specialised positions and lower skill sets and that favours physical athletes in central midfield over real "players."

And it's here to stay for the foreseeable future.

I have seen the future and it's Marseille vs. Manchester United...