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In the modern-day world of football, shoehorning players into specific positions is arguably trickier than ever given the fluid nature of today’s game and the various tactics and formations that are now commonly used. For the most part, although every Player has their favoured position – whether or not they get to play in that spot in their team is another matter entirely.
Sometimes players do change their favoured position during their career, but most often, it’s due to physical reasons that prevent an older player from doing the same job they did earlier in their career.
Steven Gerrard, for instance, dropped into more of a holding role as he got older and could no longer perform his box-to-box duties so well. Recently we’ve seen Cristiano Ronaldo become almost a traditional number nine. Some players, though, have switched position and actually either kickstarted or resurrected their career by doing so.
Here are five of them.
5. Javier Mascherano
Argentina’s Javier Mascherano made his name initially as a no-nonsense, tough-tackling holding midfielder. He broke through in his native South America in the early 2000s, but really shot to fame during his time in the Premier League, initially with West Ham and then with Liverpool. For four seasons, he played at Anfield in the holding midfield role, joining up with Steven Gerrard and Xabi Alonso to form a formidable trio.
When Barcelona signed him for around £17m in the summer of 2010, it seemed like a strange move – a tough-tackling midfielder of his ilk didn’t seem to fit in with Pep Guardiola’s tiki-taka gameplan.
Mascherano himself admitted that he didn’t expect to last long at the Nou Camp. But in March 2011, everything changed. Mascherano made a crucial tackle against Arsenal’s Nicklas Bendtner in the second leg of their Champions League second-round tie and prevented a clear goalscoring opportunity. Barca went on to win the tie 4-3 on aggregate.
Mascherano claims the tackle changed his career – it was after that moment that he was moved into the center-back position by Guardiola. The veteran Argentine departed Barcelona in 2018 after a hugely successful spell in Spain and is his country's most capped player in history.
4. Victor Moses
Since Roman Abramovich’s takeover of Chelsea in 2004, many players have tried – and failed – to establish themselves at Stamford Bridge. Before 2016/17, winger Victor Moses looked like one of those many failures.
The Blues signed Moses in the summer of 2012, but with times changing at the club and competition for places stiff due to the likes of Eden Hazard and Juan Mata being in the squad, he was unable to hold down a starting spot.
Loan moves to Liverpool, Stoke, and West Ham over the following three seasons weren’t truly successful, and West Ham even turned down the chance to sign him permanently. Things only changed when Antonio Conte arrived at Chelsea at the start of 2016/17. Impressed by Moses in pre-season, Conte brought him back into the first-team squad, and he played his first league game for Chelsea in three years in August. It was in October, though, when Moses found his groove.
After two league defeats, Conte switched tactics and introduced a new 3-4-3 formation, with the Nigerian acting as a right wing-back and learning new defensive duties from his Italian boss. Suddenly, Chelsea picked up steam, and so did Moses, becoming a key part of Conte’s increasingly successful system.
Chelsea ended up winning the league, with Moses appearing in 29 of the 38 games. The pair have been reunited since, as they currently find themselves with Inter Milan in the Serie A.
3. Gareth Barry
Everton’s Gareth Barry – a veteran of a massive 20 seasons in the Premier League – is best known as a holding midfielder, the guy who would mop up opposition attacks while his flashier teammates provided the goals and assists. It was in this position that he also earned 53 caps for England, most notably during the reign of Fabio Capello from 2008 to 2012.
Barry was never known for his speed – witness his display at the 2010 World Cup, where he resembled a man running through treacle as Mesut Ozil outpaced him one-on-one in England’s loss to Germany – so it may come as a surprise to many that Barry started his career at Aston Villa as a left-back, part of a three-man defence alongside Gareth Southgate and Ugo Ehiogu.
Although he made 32 and 30 appearances in the Premier League in his first two full seasons, it wasn’t until around the 2004/05 season that he established himself as a holding midfielder and one of Villa’s key players.
Interestingly, Barry himself had claimed that when he moved to Man City in 2009, Liverpool were also in the running for his signature. Still, he chose City because Mark Hughes promised to use him as a holding midfielder whereas Rafa Benitez at Liverpool wanted him as a utility player. Barry recognised his strengths – after so many positional switches – and wanted to stick to them.
2. Ruud Gullit
When legendary Dutch player Ruud Gullit signed for Chelsea in the summer of 1995, not only was he their most high-profile acquisition in the Premier League era, but he also raised a lot of eyebrows with his positioning.
After all, Gullit had seen tremendous success throughout his career – winning Serie A three times and the European Cup twice with AC Milan – but for the most part, it had been as an attacking midfielder or outright forward. For Chelsea, though, he was strangely deployed as a sweeper.
The move though, turned out to make a lot of sense. Gullit had started his career in the Netherlands as a deep-lying midfielder, and by the time he arrived at Chelsea, he was pushing 33 years old, and his pace had started to wane. Another factor was that his manager at Chelsea, Glenn Hoddle, had also made a move from an attacking midfielder to a sweeper as his career waned, and had helped lowly Swindon Town gain promotion to the Premier League from there.
Gullit was a massive hit at Chelsea as a sweeper. Although he was also deployed in his more traditional role as a midfielder at times, he was so successful that he ended up as the runner-up to Eric Cantona for the Player of the Season award. Hoddle himself remarked that watching Gullit play as a sweeper was “like watching an 18-year-old play against 12-year-olds”.
1. Gareth Bale
Perhaps the best success story on the list, Bale started his Tottenham Hotspur career as a left-back, behind Benoit Assou-Ekotto in the pecking order. He somehow played in 24 Premier League games with Spurs without winning one, and was offered to the likes of Birmingham and Nottingham Forest at various points.
The change occurred during Harry Redknapp’s reign at White Hart Lane, when he decided to deploy Bale in a more advanced position on the left side of midfield during the 2009/10 season.
The change was dramatic, and almost instant – Bale went from a player practically considered as a jinx to the key man for Spurs. By 2010/11, he was not only starring in the Premier League, but tearing Inter Milan’s right-back Maicon to shreds in their Champions League tie.
Once Redknapp left, and Andre Villas-Boas took over at Spurs in the summer of 2012, Bale effectively changed positions again, this time taking up a free role at the peak of Tottenham’s attack, and it was his performances from this role that prompted Real Madrid to pay a then-world record fee of £85m for the Welshman.
From there, he hasn’t looked back, as he’s starred at the Bernabeu, winning the La Liga once and the Champions League a phenomenal four times.
