“It’s my favourite finish,” says individual striker coach, Scott Chickelday. “It’s a hard finish, but it’s so underrated.”
The finish in question? The one to the near post.
It’s a quirk we seem to be enjoying more regularly — the one where players shoot from a wide angle and, just when they look nailed on to whip an effort into the far corner, they swiftly reverse the shot to the near post — wrong-footing just about everyone in the stadium.
“It comes down to your body — your knee and hips have got to open up and signal to the goalkeeper that you are going to go far post,” Chickelday says. “Then, as soon as you see the goalkeeper’s weight shift, that’s when you reverse and go the other way.”
Let’s go straight into the tape.
In this first instance, Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah comes inside against Arsenal’s Oleksandr Zinchenko, his body shape — and the large area of the goal uncovered — suggests he will shoot across David Raya (black arrow), but he swiftly pivots to close his body and strike through the ball towards the smaller area at Raya’s near post (white arrow).
Another example comes from Newcastle’s victory over Chelsea, where Joelinton robs Thiago Silva from the left side to find himself one-v-one with Robert Sanchez. As with the Salah chance, the larger area to shoot at is the far post and Joelinton’s body shape indicates he will slot it into that area of the goal (black arrow).
However, as Sanchez commits to his left, Joelinton reverses the shot into the smaller area and powers an effort to the near post (white arrow).
Perhaps the best example this season is Hwang Hee-chan’s equaliser against Newcastle United.
After cutting inside against Dan Burn, Hwang has more than half the goal to aim at towards the far post. But with two Newcastle defenders diving across, the South Korea international whips the ball into the near post as Nick Pope’s weight is pushed towards his right.
So, are these just carefully selected examples or is there a wider trend at play? Ladies and gentlemen, we have an announcement to make:
The near-post finish is on the rise in the Premier League.
As The Athletic has previously highlighted, the reverse near-post finish has been a Kylian Mbappe trademark, as he often shapes his body to the far post before duping the defender and goalkeeper by shooting towards the near side.
GO DEEPER
Mbappe’s drilled, near-post finish is bamboozling defenders and goalkeepers across Europe
This approach goes against conventional wisdom. Analysis has shown that shots from wide of the goal have a greater chance of being converted when aimed at the far post compared with the near post — which makes sense.
“What you’re taught as a kid is to go to the far post from a tight angle, because the goalkeeper may save it — or the ball may hit the post — which pushes it towards an incoming forward to get the rebound,” the Premier League goalscorer Alan Shearer tells The Athletic.
“But that doesn’t mean that’s always the right thing to do. The right thing to do is to put the ball in the back of the net, so you have to weigh up all your options and assess where the goalkeeper is — is he moving? Is he static? Is he showing you space on a certain side? You’ve only got a second or two maximum to work that out before taking the shot.”
Understandably, the situation largely dictates the selection of the shot, but it appears that near-post efforts akin to the ‘Mbappe reverse’ are catching on — and the numbers support it.
First, let’s set some criteria for what we will label a “near-post” shot.
- The shot must be in open play and come in the final 25 per cent of the pitch — anything further out seems less intentional.
- The shot’s start location must be from the near-third of the goal to the width of the penalty area (see below).
- The shot must be taken with the player’s corresponding (or ‘inverted’ foot to their shooting zone — ie, left-footed shots taken on the right side and vice versa.
- The shot’s end location must be towards the near-third of the goal. To capture off-target efforts intended towards the near post, we’ll allow the same space on the outside of the post, too.
For visual learners, that criteria look something like this.
We’ve got our method, so let’s get to the results…
The first thing to note is that since 2018-19, there has been a notable change in shot selection, with 23 per cent of players in 2023-24 selecting to shoot towards the near post when averaged across both respective zones of the pitch.
That is close to one in four shots being struck to the goalkeeper’s near side, compared with closer to one in seven shots (15 per cent) in 2018-19.
Yes, the majority of the shots from these situations are still directed away from the near post, but when logged across multiple seasons, that is a discernible rise — and likely speaks to the due diligence undertaken by the player taking the strike.
“As a forward, you should know the strengths and weaknesses of the goalkeeper you’re playing at the weekend. Is he good at tight angles? Does he try to cheat in his movement and leave more of the goal exposed?” Shearer says.
“If you’re a winger and you know that a goalkeeper likes to commit himself, then it would be on your mind to shape up one way and have a shot (towards the other corner) — and that comes from knowing who you’re coming up against.”
Breaking this down across each side of the pitch, the evidence suggests that the effect holds irrespective of footedness, but there are some subtle differences.
Compared with left-footers, right-footed players opt for a near-post finish slightly more when given the opportunity — with this season’s 24 per cent being the highest since 2018-19.
So, right-footers score more near-post goals?
Well, predominantly, yes. When we drill down into the specifics at the player level, we can see most of the top 20 players to score near-post goals since 2018-19 have been right-footed, scoring from the left side of the pitch.
However, Mohamed Salah has a few things to say on the topic — leading the pack with 16 efforts scored at the near-third of the goal, including this season’s strike against Arsenal.
The only other player to reach double figures in that period is Harry Kane, whose masterful finishing is a huge loss to the Premier League, but Bayern Munich fans will have already seen that his near-post goals are by design rather than luck.
“If I’m facing up to the goal, I’ll go touch, touch, and then back across (goal) quickly,” Kane said in a 2019 interview. “The defender is sticking out a leg, so you go back through the legs — I tend to go back across goal, it’s so hard for keepers to get set and save it.”
A perfect example of Kane’s approach can be seen against West Ham United in 2020-21, as a nutmeg on Declan Rice opens up the goal — with Kane shaping for the far post (black arrow) before drilling the ball low to the left of the goal between the legs of Angelo Ogbonna (white arrow).
Of course, the players at the top of this list are prolific goalscorers in their own right, so it’s more interesting to see the share of shots that a player selects towards the near post when they are in the respective zone of opportunity on their inverted side.
Among all players with a minimum of 50 shots within the desired zones, Manchester United’s Mason Mount comes out as the player most likely to strike for the near post, just ahead of Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins — each with one-third of their right-footed efforts preferred towards the left third of the goal (as they look at it).
Watkins is a particularly interesting case, with the England international undertaking personalised finishing sessions with Chickelday, who has worked one-on-one with multiple Premier League forwards in recent years.
“I remember seeing an interview with David Seaman about penalties, and he used to make his judgment (on the direction of his dive) based on the orientation of the player’s knees and hips,” says Chickelday.
“So I thought we can use that information against goalkeepers. If we can try and open the body as long as we can, get the goalkeeper to move, and then we close the body up and finish. It’s all about being patient, shifting weight to unbalance goalkeepers and that’s when we get that reverse strike off.”
By contrast, it is interesting to see a left-footed skew among those most likely to aim towards the far post when given the opportunity.
Manchester United’s Antony leads the way with his shot selection from the wide angle, with nearly half of his efforts going across goal when cutting onto his (much) stronger foot.
You can call it a trademark, or you can call it predictable, but Antony’s shooting approach can often be read easily by the goalkeeper — when he looks to unleash from outside the area, you know he is shaping for the far corner.
Players with a dominant striking approach will often make the goalkeeper’s life easy, but in the age of specialised analysis — and the standard of goalkeeping arguably as high as it has ever been in the Premier League — are forwards regaining the upper hand in terms of fooling their opponents?
“I always say with strikers, it’s like a game of chess,” says Chickelday. “So when you’re coming to the edge of the box, you’re trying to force a move out of that goalkeeper and as soon as he takes that move, you’re going against it. Checkmate — and that’s the hardest part.”
Of course, each shooting situation holds unique factors that determine the likelihood of its end location, making it tricky to pinpoint the exact reason behind this near-post trend.
“Whether it’s a conscious thing from the forwards or a consequence of goalkeepers shifting across goal to limit shots across goal to limit the angle (and leaving their near post free), is difficult to answer — but you have to weigh up that situation in the moment and assess what is best,” says Shearer.
Whatever the reason, the trend remains clear. Conventional wisdom to shoot across the goalkeeper goes out of the window when the situational cues are presented to you.
“That’s my motto,” Chickelday concludes. “You never take the shot you want — you take the shot you have to.”
2024-01-17 05:33:52
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