Why is there no room for Raumdeuters in the Premier League?
Maybe it explains why Kai Havertz's Premier League career has been so confusing
This is this months free post, if you want to read more from Played on Paper, please subscribe using the link below.
If I was to ask you ‘What is Kai Havertz’s best position at Chelsea?’, those of you who didn’t instantly reply ‘sat on the bench’ would struggle to give me an answer.
He isn’t able to separate himself effectively from defenders to be a reliable number nine, but he doesn’t have the technical skillset or dribbling ability to play as a traditional number 10.
The German is stuck in a sort of limbo where no matter where he is deployed on the field, it doesn’t seem like he’s being properly utilised by Graham Potter (or Thomas Tuchel before him).
But this wasn’t always the case.
In his final season for Leverkusen, Havertz managed 18 goals and 9 assists in 3797 minutes and was lauded as one of the biggest talents in Germany at 20 years old. So what happened?
Of course, many people’s first thought will be the ‘Bundesliga Tax’, and while that may play a part (Grace Roberston wrote a great article about whether it exists which you can read here), I don’t think that’s the only or even the biggest reason.
Kai Havertz is a Raumdeuter or a ‘Space Invader’; a player who emerges from the shadows to steal the spotlight.
But while I believe that this role can find success elsewhere and in certain systems, it currently doesn’t have a place in the Premier League.
So what is a Raumdeuter and why do they rule the Bundesliga especially?
Football is a game about finding space, if your team is not on the ball, you look to minimise it, if your team is on the ball, you want to move into it.
Many forwards often have skill sets that help them create this space themselves - pace, strength, and dribbling ability. But what if you are not blessed with these gifts, what do you do then?
You figure out where the space is going to open up based on how the rest of the team is playing and you time your run into it.
This is the fundamental idea that Thomas Muller built his career on and after several impressive campaigns, he was asked by an interviewer what his role actually was. The German replied:
“Ich bin ein Raumdeuter (I am an interpreter of space).”
And with those words, Thomas Muller defined the undefinable and became the first and only player to embody that role… well that’s the story that many like to go with at least.
The truth is that ‘Raumdeuter’ is just a name that Muller created to symbolise his style of play, so yes he may be the first and only one. However, the fundamental concepts that make up his style of play align with many players both past and present and in several different positions (Muller even said as much in the full version of his original quote).
Gerd Muller, as well as being known as Der Bomber, was also known as ‘The Phantom’ or ‘The Ghost of the Penalty Box’ for his ability to appear in the box in space and score. One of my favourite quotes from the late great striker (which also lends itself to my point) was:
"I was never into performing magic tricks for the crowd. I just wanted to score."
However for both Mullers, the core concept remained the same - they would watch where their teammates ran and then they would observe where the opposition would set up to defend them and which area neither of these groups occupied on the pitch, that’s where they would go.
Timing, intelligence and a decent level of technical ability to make the most of chances when they fall to them are also important (you can cheat it slightly, but we’ll get to that later).
But why does this style of football work so well in the Bundesliga?
Something that Gerd Muller did not have to contend with was the new offside rule1, but its introduction did cause a tactical evolution across Europe.
One of the tactics that this birthed was the mid-block, which is still employed across the Bundesliga today. This creates clear lines for the Raumdeuter to interpret and look for gaps in but also space behind for them to attack.
The implementation of gegenpressing was also important, as when players are focused on pressing who has the ball, it creates exploitable spaces for the attacker who thrives in moving without it.
It also helped Thomas Muller that he played for Bayern Munich, and this would have also been the case for Kai Havertz playing for Bayer Leverkusen.
Their sides have a lot of technical quality and are expected to have more of the ball in the majority of games, this means the players who sit in behind the Raumdeuter can push up the pitch and help move the ball around in the absence of a more creative number 10.
But why can’t this work in the Premier League specifically?
Why don’t they work in the Premier League?
In some ways, the subtitle to this section is a misnomer, because it should read ‘Why can’t they work anymore?’
In the 1990s, the Premier League went through a similar tactical evolution, with many teams changing from a 4-4-2 to a 4-4-1-1 to exploit the spaces between the lines and also to give teams a secondary runner to exploit the space in behind when the gaps opened up.
Sound familiar? Yeah thought it might and this shift gave us the likes of Eric Cantona and Dennis Bergkamp (as I said Muller gave us the name of his variation, he did not make up the general position).
Brian Phillips gave an excellent summation of what Bergkamp brought to the role which I think should be the remit for any successful shadow striker in his 22 Goals piece on the player for The Ringer:
“It’s the absolute confidence that you’re going to get the pass in the exact right place every time. The confidence that if you manage to fling the ball in his general direction, there’s a good chance he’s going to do something non-obvious and brilliant with it. The knowledge that he’s going to drift into spaces that leave the other team so vulnerable that their whole defense breaks down.”
The problem is that since that point the Premier League has gone through a diversification rather than an evolution.
The Premier League is known as a global league, for its varied collection of players and managers. This means that there are a lot of different ideas flying around rather than one unifying vision - if there is an ‘English’ way to play the game, it is seen as archaic and ineffective.
So this makes it hard for a player with as specific a skillset as a Raumdeuter to make an impact consistently because the circumstances will vary from game to game.2
They don’t have a guaranteed formula for success (I have been watching way too much Blue Lock).
We’ve seen this with Kai Havertz at Chelsea, but also Donny van der Beek and Jadon Sancho at Manchester United and Davy Klaasen at Everton3.
In general, most teams do not give up a lot of space around their box and these players don’t have the pace to exploit the highest of lines or the dribbling ability to pick apart low blocks. (Sancho is a weird one here, but we’ll get back to him later).
Furthermore, if you look at the teams in the Premier League that would dominate possession enough to get the best out of a player like Muller, they would often choose to sign someone with a much more rounded skillset.
The Dele Alli Anomaly
Now if you’ve been reading this and thinking ‘But what about Dele Alli?’ let’s talk about him as ‘the exception.’
For three seasons, Alli was one of the best attackers in England playing just behind Harry Kane at Tottenham Hotspur. In the 2016/17 campaign, he scored 18 goals and registered 9 assists in the Premier League and won the Young Player of the Season award as well.
Many touted him to only get better with age, but fast forward to today and he can’t even get a game for Besiktas. So what happened?
Alli was technically gifted especially when it came to manipulating the ball with his first touch, like many who occupy the Raumdeuter role. Still, unlike his fellow ‘shadow strikers’, he made such an impact in the Premier League because he was also physically dominant.
Alli’s movement was great, but it didn’t need to be exceptional. He could afford to have opposition players closer to him than a traditional Raumdeuter because he knew he’d physically outmatch them; he also could afford to take extra touches because he could retain possession by positioning his body correctly.
Then injuries happened, and Alli lost that physical edge.
Alli now couldn’t get ahead of defenders as easily and his extra touches now resulted in him being dispossessed. And with his incomplete skillset due to him skipping a few steps due to his physicality, the drop off in quality has been massive (though Alli’s attitude has also exacerbated the situation).
He’s an anomaly because he was able to cheat the rules rather than be an exception to them, and now that he has regressed physically, the norm has been re-established.
So should we just not buy ‘Raumdeuters’ then?
Well yes and no.
As I said, ‘Raumdeuter’ is just a term Muller made up to define how he played the game and if a player relies on a similar skillset then there is an argument against signing them for a Premier League side (this will be the sign I will be repeatedly hitting when teams are linked with Florian Wirtz).
However, just because they play the role of a Raumdeuter, Trequartista or Shadow Striker, it doesn’t mean they are limited to just ticking that box.
Roberto Firmino played as a Raumdeuter at Hoffenheim, but due to his link-up play and close control, he was adapted into a False 9 at Liverpool and formed a formidable strike force with Sadio Mane and Mohammed Salah.
During his time at Sporting CP, Bruno Fernandes' played like a second striker in the majority of his appearances. The Portuguese midfielder often made third-man runs into and around the box to get into scoring positions. However, the player also showed an incredible work rate and passing ability which has allowed him to adopt a much more creative role at United.
United will be hoping to successfully adapt Sancho into a new role as well. At Dortmund he was a creative force on either wing or through the middle, finding the pockets of space and creating for his teammates. However, in the Premier League, his lack of burst and weak physicality means that he has struggled to find any form.
The current plan seems to be to have him play a similar role to that of Bernardo Silva at Manchester City, due to his vision and tricky feet, but whether that will work out we will have to see. His limited physicality could prove too much of a stumbling block.
However, we have also seen adaptations that haven’t quite worked out. Van der Beek was played in a pivot which went horrifically and Havertz was played as a pure striker for a long time which limited his impact.
There will always be exceptions to every rule and given how many tactical evolutions there have been in recent years, a manager finding an effective way to deploy a luxury Raumdeuter/Shadow Striker would not surprise me.
But in its current iteration, the Premier League will prove a graveyard for attackers who thrive in space and offer very little else.
Multiple changes have happened since 1990, which includes reducing the number of players that need to be between the forward and the goal to be onside which caused a change in tactics, but on a personal level, in 2005 they tweaked the rule so that parts of the body that you can’t score with would not place you offside
In general, league-specific roles such as the Regista, Mezzala and Raumdeuter don’t survive first contact with the Premier League because they were designed to work in the systems specific to that country and that would be an interesting thing to research at some point.
The Dutch players here are symbolic because it was Louis van Gaal who influenced Muller becoming a Raumdeuter, the same manager who played Dennis Bergkamp as a Shadow Striker.
It's taken me ages to get around to reading this, but what a read it was. Absolutely fantastic.