Is Crossing Becoming A Dying Breed?

The game of soccer has changed a lot over the past 50 years, and with that, so has the idea of crosses.

In the 1940's and 1950's, it was not uncommon that the game was based on having two pacy wingers who could get to the end line and get a cross over.

Even for most of David Beckham's career at Manchester United, he was regarded for his ability to cross the ball - both during the run of play and through set pieces.

Paul Gardner recently wrote an outstanding piece for Soccer America, where he discusses how the evolution of the game has changed the role of the cross.

In the 1940s and 1950s that was the way you played the game, you had two fast and tricky wingers who would race toward the goal line, over would come a tempting cros s and then ... just at the right moment! -- the burly center forward would come charging up, to meet the ball powerfully with a thunderbolt of a header that ripped past the goalkeeper for a breath-taking goal.

Sounds great -- and actually, I’m not exaggerating that much, things often did happen that way. The name typifying that sort of play was Tommy Lawton, who scored many a superb goal just like that. But Lawton has gone, he died in 1996, and the robust simplicity of the game he played has gone with him.

You don’t see many goals like that these days ... and yet, strange to relate, the British obsession with the cross is as strong as ever. This makes little sense to me, because I am convinced that most crosses are dealt with pretty easily by modern defenses.

A definition is required. I’m treating as a “cross” any aerial ball that is played from the flanks into the penalty area from within a distance of say 30 ya rds back from the goal line -- farther out than that, it is hardly a cross, more of a long forward ball. I’m also including corner kicks and free kicks -- provided they are played in the air.

The vast majority of the crosses it seems to me are speculative -- they are not aimed at a specific teammate, they are lofted into the penalty area in the hope that they will find a teammate. Nothing more complicated than that -- put the ball into “the mixer” and hope for the best.

So I have done some research into this matter, checking up on myself to see if I’m getting this right. Admittedly, rather primitive research, but it’s a start. I chose a couple of games from this past weekend, one from Spain (Barcelona vs. Racing Santander), one from England (Everton vs. Manchester United), and went through them looking for crosses.

The stats are admittedly slender -- observations on just two games -- but what they reveal is empha tic -- so much so, that they astounded even me -- and I was more or less ready for them.

Game (Crosses)	Crosses causing danger	Crosses resulting in goals
Barcelona 4 Racing 0 (17)	3 (17.6%)	0
Everton 3 Man. United 1 (63)	6 ( 9.5%)	0

The enormous difference between the use of crosses in the Spanish and English games is surely significant. If it be argued that the choice of Barcelona, with its intricate passing game, skews the results, I would argue that it is a fair comparison of one of Spain’s top teams against ManU, one of England’s.

There is also the stunning news that despite 80 (repeat, eighty) crosses, not one of them led to a goal being scored. Two of the goals (Dimitar Berbatov for ManU, Dan Gosling for Everton) did come from balls played into the area -- but these were ground balls, much closer to being accurate passes.

Everton and ManU used the cross 63 times, which works out pretty nearly at once per minute of actual playing time. Yet it has a zero success rate, and registers only a 1 in 10 rating on "causing danger." That makes it sound hopelessly dumb.

But, who knows, maybe the carpet bombing of aerial crosses merely makes the ground ball more effective when it comes as a sudden surprise. Could be, I suppose. Though I’m far from convinced.