8 - An eight is an all-purpose central midfielder.

Here are a few others you could learn if you really want to impress people: Those are by far the most common positions you’ll hear called out by number. A six may also be a playmaker, like a ten, but farther back, helping the team transition from defense to offense.

A six may be a big, strong, tough player who acts as an additional defender, following the opposition’s best midfield player and tackling them hard. Like a nine, a player can be a six in different ways.

6 - A six is a holding or defensive midfielder.

He is often the best known player, the most well respected player, the highest paid player, and the team captain as well. The offense flows through her on its way up the field. 10 - The ten is the best playmaker on the team.Whether she uses speed to streak towards the goal and score or strength to receive long passes and hold on to the ball while his teammates move up the field, the nine is the focal point of the offense. 9 - A nine is the central attacker on any team.Here are a few of the most important numbers to know: What we’re left with is the use of some numbers to refer to positions despite the fact that their meanings are almost totally divorced from jersey numbers. Although they were in the past, today’s players are no longer required to wear the number of their position. Simultaneously, players became more empowered in terms of choosing their jersey number. Over time though, as formations have continued to evolve and soccer has become an even more globally blended game, with players from all over playing everywhere, the differing number systems have coalesced into something of a consensus. The shift in formation is only one of the evolutionary forces that make soccer numbers difficult to follow. Soon after they began using numbers, Chelsea took a trip to South America, where according to Wikipedia, they were called “Los Numerados” or “the numbered.” The South American host teams picked up the concept of numbering their players from back to front but, since they played with different formations, they used almost entirely different number to position pairings.įor a while, this must have been so confusing to international viewers as to make the numbers virtually useless in decoding the game. As you might imagine, this has magnificently jumbled the numbering. Today, teams play in more defensive formations with four defenders and either three midfielders and three forwards or four midfielders and two forwards. Chelsea played with two defenders, three midfielders, and a whopping five forwards.

Unfortunately for modern soccer viewers, the teams of the 1920s played a very different formation from ones that are common today. Of the 11 players on the field, they started with the most defensive player, the goalie, and counted upwards from one to 11, going from right to left when players were on the same line. Instead of giving their players a choice, the team assigned numbers by position. It began in the 1920s in England with the club team Chelsea. Having players wear numbers on the back of their jerseys is actually a relatively modern phenomenon. We’ll run through the history first and then get to the modern meanings. Luckily, only a few positions are commonly referred to by number and they are quite easy to learn. Third, the meaning of the numbers has evolved over time in twisted ways so that they can no longer be said to be intuitive. Second, there was once an assumption that a player would wear the number of the position he played but that’s no longer the case. First, there are 11 players on the field for each team and remembering 11 positions by number is difficult. The use of numbers in soccer is legitimately confusing for a few reasons. It’s typical in basketball to refer to a player’s position by number but at least there, there are only five positions to keep track of and a player’s jersey number virtually never matches his position as it sometimes does in soccer. In American football, the NFL regulates jersey numbers so that each position has a set of numbers only its players are eligible to wear.

The use of a number system to refer to positions is not unusual in sports. Numbers are often used in soccer to refer to a player’s position. Why do some numbers in soccer refer to positions? What do they mean?

Positions and numbers in soccer