Why scoring headers is a disappearing art form

In the first Premier League season of 1992-93, there were 265 headed goals. Today that figure is down by a hundred as the big target men are replaced by quicker, more mobile strikers

THE beautifully headed goal is a thrilling act of athleticism. Not simply a matter of planting your forehead in the flight path of the ball. The run and the spring, the strength in a crowd scene, are integral.

Then the header itself. Calculating the ball’s trajectory and speed, assessing all angles to the goal and the shifting bodyweight of the goalkeeper, and bracing for the inevitable thwack of physical contact. ‘An art form,’ says ex-England centre forward Brian Deane. Albeit, a disappearing one.

When Deane scored the opening goal of the new Premier League era for Sheffield United against Manchester United in 1992, it was the first of 265 headers in the inaugural campaign. This accounted for 21.7 per cent of the total scored by the 22 top-flight teams. Three years later, headers made up 23.1 per cent of all goals. Recently, it has dropped to 15 per cent.

Headed goals have not accounted for more than 20 per cent of Premier League goals since 2000-01. The 200-goal barrier has not been broken since 2010-11.

The game is quicker, more intricate and played closer to the ground than ever before. With this has evolved a different type of footballer. Many tower over 6ft but fewer could be categorised as aerial specialists and exceptions catch the eye.

‘When Erling Haaland came in, people didn’t know how to cope with his subtle movement in the six-yard box,’ says Deane. ‘That for me is exciting football but people have learned to love something else and I don’t know if it will ever come back to the same degree.’

FOOTBALL in a digital world zips around on immaculate surfaces. Possession is easier to control, tempo easier to dictate. Pristine pitches reduce the need for a big, strong centre forward to take down long balls hoisted out of defence to bypass the quagmires from the age of analogue football.

Globalisation has transformed the English game, blending styles and philosophies, changing interpretation of the rules. With reckless tackles and physical intimidation almost eradicated, tactical fashions have drifted one way.

Pep Guardiola has been a revolutionary force, although Arsene Wenger’s arrival in 1996 was perhaps the catalyst. His initial Arsenal teams were big and powerful, built around Patrick Vieira and Emmanuel Petit, and the back five he inherited from George Graham but as they became ever purer, Wenger railed against the aerial and physical combat of teams such as Sam Allardyce’s Bolton and Tony Pulis’s Stoke.

He bemoaned Stoke’s ‘rugbystyle’ tactics and complained to the FA about the grass being too long. In his role at FIFA, Wenger floated ideas about replacing throw-ins with five-a-side tap-ins.

Still haunted by Stoke’s line-out operation, it seemed, but if this was English football’s culture war then the Wengerites had won. Anything representing direct, aerial football became castigated as some sort of dinosaurball.

‘When we got the ball forward quickly and wide there was a disdain for it in the national media and it spread and became unfashionable,’ recalls Deane, who played for the Blades, Leeds, Middlesbrough and Leicester in the Premier League. ‘People said, “Long ball this, that and the other”.’

Wenger’s reactions to horrific impact injuries to Eduardo at Birmingham in 2008 and Aaron Ramsey at Stoke two years later were significant staging posts in a crackdown on reckless tackling and, by association, blood-andthunder football.

Guardiola’s sublime Barcelona team, meanwhile, were taking over the world. Diminutive giants with Lionel Messi at centre forward, Javier Mascherano at centre half and tiki-taka midfielders Xavi and Andres Iniesta. Out of Germany came the gegenpressing, with a high defensive line squeezing play into the opposition half to turn over possession and create overloads. Pace, mobility and energy became the priorities up front.

Liverpool, who set a British transfer record when they bought Andy Carroll for £35million in 2011, signed Christian Benteke in 2015 just weeks before they appointed Jurgen Klopp, who led them in another direction.

The new wave of owners — mostly from overseas, the bulk from the USA — came to value the image and ‘identity’ of the club. Aesthetics mattered in the scramble to secure the eyeballs of the world.

Then there is the Pep Factor. Guardiola arrived at Manchester City in 2016 and has swept all before him with sweet, precision football, dominating possession, dragging the opposition out of shape, threading intricate passes into congested penalty areas, pulling short crosses back from the byline to create clear chances.

Unrivalled success followed in an age of data overload and expected goals. Coaches at all levels want to play the same way. It has become the norm. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the number of crosses recorded has fallen in line with the number of headers scored.

More surprisingly, this season the percentage of headed goals in the Championship is even lower than in the top flight.

FACED with the bare facts of the diminishing number of headed goals, former England strikers Alan Smith, Mick Harford and Deane make a beeline for the styles of City and Liverpool.

‘Dominant teams play with inverted wingers because the game is now about retaining possession, controlling certain areas,’ says Deane. ‘Teams play with three strikers and the wide ones like to come inside and shoot. Defenders pack the box and space is limited. It’s multi-layered, but I can understand centre forwards now wondering when the ball is coming into the box. I always liked pace on the ball. With pace on, you might only need a slight deviation to beat the keeper or you could use it to generate power.

‘There’s no point putting a ball in the box with inverted wingers. If the right winger checks back on to his left foot, everybody squeezes out, so as a centre forward you don’t get those opportunities to get across your defender and generate enough power on the ball to beat the goalkeeper.’

When he led the line for 10 clubs including Birmingham and Luton, Harford would berate team-mates who had the temerity to resist crossing the ball at the earliest opportunity.

‘From the position of their bodies I had an idea where they could put it,’ says Harford. ‘I didn’t like it at the near post because I didn’t really have the pace to get across the front of people.

‘I used to like the ball hung up so I could come and attack it. I don’t see that any more. I see headers from standing jumps in the central areas but I don’t see people running 10-15 yards and springing off one leg, attacking the ball and heading it in the top corner.’

Search out Harford’s second goal for Derby in a 6-0 win against

Sunderland in the League Cup in 1990 for an idea of what he has in mind. On the run from the left, he soars above everyone to meet a deep cross and beat the keeper from 15 yards on an angle.

‘Heading the ball is not about heading the ball,’ says Harford, now chief recruitment officer at Luton. ‘It is all about your feet. When I coached, l asked players which foot they liked to jump off. They didn’t know what I meant, but I’m right footed and I would jump off my left foot.

‘If you can’t move your feet quickly enough then you can’t head the ball. It’s a dance, getting your feet in the right position to attack the ball. Then you have to be brave and put your head where it might hurt because you’ve still got to make good contact.’

SOME of this is self-perpetuating. Coaches decide that tactically they can cope without a big man up front, so the player best able to score with a header is no longer on the pitch, so data trends indicate high crosses slung over from wide areas are leading to fewer goals, so fewer crosses are slung over from wide areas.

With the receding likelihood of aerial attack, there is not the same demand for towering central defenders who can dominate in the air. And, although set-pieces remain vital, possibly more than ever with specialist set-piece coaches part of the furniture, central defenders do not come with the same aerial menace they did when John Terry and Nemanja Vidic went up for a corner.

Premier League teams recruiting central defenders now prioritise pace and ability on the ball because they want them to play out from the back through the press and have speed to recover.

Increasingly, the wealthiest teams will recruit from overseas — particularly down the spine of the team — rather than from the lower leagues. Smith cut his teeth at non-League Alvechurch before winning the Golden Boot twice as an Arsenal player.

Supply has shifted to satisfy demand. Modern academies are producing highly technical footballers with limited experience in the physical or aerial football you found in the old reserve-team leagues, the Central League and the Combination.

All these factors are in play yet we are not close to the end of the headed goal. Last season, Harry Kane scored 30 Premier League goals — 10 were headers, breaking Duncan Ferguson’s record. Haaland scored 10 of his first 50 Premier League goals with his head.

When Fulham lost Aleksandar Mitrovic they signed Raul Jimenez to replace his threat. This season has seen a slight uptick, currently running at 16 per cent, up from 15.3 per cent.

On the first weekend of February, there were nine headed goals in 10 Premier League games, representing 20 per cent of the 45 scored, five of them from set-pieces.

‘Any team, if they need a goal, if they’ve tried everything and it’s failed, they will all put the big centre half up front and go long,’ says Harford. ‘It doesn’t matter if it’s Liverpool, Manchester United or Manchester City, they all do it. I see it happen worldwide and I think, “Well, why didn’t you do it in the beginning if you think that’s the best way of scoring a goal?”

‘So there’s always going to be a place in football for a target man. For the 6ft 2in centre forward who is aerially very good, and keeps things alive in the box because of his height and presence.’

Luton generate passages of genuine aerial threat with Elijah Adebayo and Carlton Morris up front. They have scored 10 headers — only Arsenal can claim more — and have disturbed some of the best centre halves with a dimension others lack.

Sheffield United have scored one header in the top flight this season, and Burnley three.

‘All coaches want their teams to score goals and it’s a good avenue if you have the right players to deliver it and head it,’ says Smith. ‘That is hard to defend against, especially if you’re up against somebody who can time the run and get across defenders.

‘And our crowds still love to see that sort of football. There’s nothing like a good cross and a header. The timing of it. If you could time your run and jump and guide it where you wanted it to go, it was very satisfying.’

The roar of the crowd, urging players to ‘get it in the box’, appears to play a part. The season hit by the pandemic (2019-20) produced the fewest headed goals, only 138 at 13.3 per cent. Premier League crowds are probably less vocal, less urgent and certainly more corporate than 30 years ago.

There has been a cyclical nature to tactical fashions over time with one style morphing into another as coaches pursue ways to win.

In one sense, there might be no better time to be strong in the air, but who wants to be the next Jeff Astle? A footballer now, tragically, better known for the brain injuries leading to his premature death at 59, than for his aerial prowess as a West Bromwich Albion and England centre forward.

It is difficult to admire the majesty of Gordon McQueen’s headed goal for Scotland against England in the same way since vascular dementia claimed his life, last year, at the age of 70.

Football’s dementia crisis means the FA recommend children do not head the ball at all before the Under 14 age group, and abide by strict limits until Under 18 level.

For adults, the guidelines stipulate one session a week involving no more than 10 headers. Yet when Nottingham Forest boss Nuno Espirito Santo was at Tottenham, he admitted ignoring them.

Medical science shows there is a connection, although football should commit more of its millions to researching the link and caring for former players who need help.

That is the uneasy backdrop to any talk about heading, and maybe the one factor above all others condemning those exhilarating headed goals in the distant past.