The evolution of the Defensive Midfielder

  

 When looking at all the successful teams throughout the years, they all have a top quality midfield or core of the team as I like to call it. For example the 1999 team of Manchester United, with Roy Keane and Paul Scholes acting as crucial member's of the treble winning team. Or the 2008 Barcelona side who dominated world football with Andreas Iniesta and Xavi at the peak of their careers. The point is quality in Midfield is a key element of any successful team, but through recent years specifically in the combative, defensive part of midfield I have witnessed a noticeable change in the evolution of the defensive style midfielder. 


   An example of this is Claude Maklele. A household Premier League name and one of the most effective defensive midfielders to have graced the Premier League. He was the catalyst in midfield during Chelsea's Russian Revolution of 2004, strings of great defensive performances from midfield made it nearly impossible for teams to break down the Chelsea defense. In over 207 games for Chelsea the Defensive midfielder managed only two goals, but it is undisputed that he was one of the best Premier League midfielders. This highlights the evolution of the defensive midfielder the fact that he scored hardly any goals but instead contributed so much on the pitch. Or maybe fans have just become goal greedy in this modern day game, and impatient with players. Would players like Makelele, and Viera prosper in today's faster and more technical game as well as they did in the early 2000's? 

   If you look at today's typical 'defensive midfielder's' and the likes of Paul Pogba, Luka Modric and Nemanja Matic, they all do their defensive work admirably, but also assist with a high number of goals for their teams. This once again highlights the change in the way in which the defensive midfielder has gone through a period of evolution over the last few years. Sergio Busquets, arguably one of the best defensive midfielders in the World is constantly criticised for his lack of goals, even thought he has three times the number of goals that Claude Makelele had with the same number of appearances (Goal.com). Sergio Busquets is part of a dying breed of defensive midfielders, no longer are you able to operate in this position within a team and not score 5-10 goals in a season. There are defensive midfielders who can easily do this now throughout Europe, and Paul Pogba, symbolizes this revolution for me. 
   
 It's hard to even nail down a correct position for the Frenchman, but Paul Pogba plays a majority of his game in the defensive area of midfield but his record for a defensive midfielder is statistically incredible. In 122 appearances for club at country at the young age of 22 Paul Pogba has scored 22 goals and made 14 assists, an incredible tally. For me, this is the benchmark for future defensive midfielders; Paul Pogba is the best defensive midfielder in World football. But others like Blaise Matuidi also follow the same trends as Paul Pogba and the new style of a defensive midfielder, he has also notched up 18 goals and 13 assists in his career so far.

   I feel that it is likely in 5-10 years that 'natural' defensive midfielders will be the make-up of the top midfield's in the world, and that clubs will only look to deploy these goal scoring and assist providing defensive players. Values of these players will shoot through the roof and I can see young defensive midfield talent like Paul Pogba, Youri Teilemans, and Marco Veratti going for a lot more money than even luxury players like Gareth Bale, Di Maria and Marco Reus are worth. Players go for big money because of their individual contributions to the team, the more you contribute to success on the field the more you are worth. Another factor that contributes to the greater worth of a quality defensive midfielder is that fact that they are simply not enough in the world, so for the true quality as mentioned above super-clubs like Real Madrid, Manchester United and P.S.G will be more than willing to pay astronomical fees for their services.