What Happens When Your Best Player Is Too Good?

The Poisoned Chalice of World-Class Talent

World-class talent. World sized problems.

Every manager dreams of having a World XI at their disposal.

Every fan salivates at the thought of their club signing the next Messi.

But beyond the obvious benefits, there's an unspoken web of complications that come with world-class players - ones that can genuinely cripple a club's ability to build a team.

Let’s talk about the Poisoned Chalice of world-class players.

The First Sip

Freedom for one. Chains for ten.

The first poisoned sip comes in the form of tactical rigidness.

World-class players don't adapt to your tactical system, you adapt to them.

A strange example of this is Casemiro at Real Madrid.

Undoubtedly, when it came to off-the-ball defending, he was possibly the best in the world in his position - the perfect mixture of positional intelligence to stop moves before they developed, the ability to cover large spaces, physicality to put in tackles and perhaps most iconically; a willingness to engage in the dark arts when all else failed.

On the ball - well we know it's not Casemiro's strongest suit, but what he offered defensively was so vital that his managers always had to adapt.

And the gluttonous amount of silverware Madrid enjoyed shows it's not always a bad thing but Ancelotti had to get Modric and Toni Kroos to drop deeper and get Casemiro to push higher up when Real Madrid were on the ball.

Obviously Modric and particularly Kroos were more than happy dictating the play from deep for years, however it did mean that in the biggest games, they could lack the creativity that both would have provided had they been higher up the pitch - I mean both started their careers a little further up the pitch.

Instead for years Madrid suffered with the "Casemiro at 10" dilemma where when the ball did come to the Brazilian in those right zones in the midfield he looked clunky - but it was a sacrifice managers had to make to keep his world class defensive ability.

And while this tactical compromise worked for Madrid historically, their current predicament shows how these rigid positional demands can create even thornier issues. Look at the brewing Mbappé-Vinicius situation.

Both are world class but Vini was at the Santiago Bernabéu first so his position is fixed, meaning Mbappé has to play out of position.

The result?

While Madrid are paying for two world-class talents, they're getting one, and the other when out of position becomes just "pretty good" as opposed to world-class and also begins to look quite disgruntled.

The Price of Loyalty

Another common theme emerges when you're lucky enough to hold onto these players as they begin to age.

Remember young, scrawny Messi? He was the right winger/false 9 who was unbelievable on the ball, but insatiable off it, leading the press and running for 90 minutes, winning the ball back as quickly as possible for his team.

Well, as these world-class attacking players age, you inevitably have to make up for them defensively as they become less and less interested in tracking back.

At the tail end of his Barcelona career, every manager had to account for Messi inevitably drifting in from the right wing and not tracking back.

It threw off the team shape and demanded their right backs do their best Dani Alves impressions to provide all the width (even if it wasn't naturally their game) while hustling back to defend the inevitable counter.

The midfield also had to compensate, with Ivan Rakitic particularly under Valverde essentially playing as a right midfielder in a 4-4-2, his primary role being to cover for Messi defensively despite being an outstanding midfielder in his own right.

The same story played out at their biggest rivals. Madrid faced a similar phenomenon when Ronaldo began to age out but still started as a left winger while behaving more and more like a centre-forward.

The end result - particularly defensively - was Benzema having to sacrifice himself for the team, either defending deeper or covering the left flank.

Just how significant this sacrifice was became obvious when Ronaldo departed Real Madrid and Benzema could finally show his true potential.

The Hidden Cost

This brings us onto the biggest "problem" with having truly elite players at your disposal.

They demand playing every minute of every game.

This has a variety of negative effects.

Firstly, it stifles the development of young players in the same position who may be looking to get some experience.

But more importantly, by playing every minute, the player becomes a bigger and bigger part of the team, and the team becomes more and more tailored to their strengths and weaknesses.

So what happens when those minutes add up and that world-class player picks up an injury?

Looking at this pyramid explains a lot.

When you have a world-class player who will play every minute of every game, it becomes almost impossible to have a player of even starter level as their backup because most starters want to... start.

What do the names Vincent Janssen, Fernando Llorente and Carlos Vinicius have in common?

Spurs found out these are the level of player you attract to play backup when you have an established world-class player, meaning any injury to your main man and things can begin to crumble very quickly.

Manchester City have experienced this from both sides of the coin. Take Rodri's situation - Kalvin Phillips (an established Premier League player performing well) came in as backup but barely got any minutes and demanded to leave, again showing how hard having a reliable backup for a world-class player is.

City's solution?

Simply not having any real backup but instead having players who could "do a job" (Gundogan, Kovacic) in that position when their world-class player was injured - again, a significant drop-off.

Up front, they faced the opposite challenge with Julian Alvarez.

Here was a solid-elite backup to Haaland, but with the Norwegian having to play every minute, keeping Alvarez as a consistent bench presence would have inevitably seen him leave.

The solution?

Pep had to deploy him as an attacking midfielder, far from his comfort zone, just to get him minutes. Even that wasn't enough to keep him satisfied long-term.

It’s a problem the two best right-wingers in the Premier League are causing their team right now.

If you were a right winger with immense talent and approaching elite or even just starter-level quality, would you want to join Liverpool or Arsenal?

Breaking The Curse

There are occasions where it's possible to have elite backups to world-class players.

The most common scenario is when the backup knows it's a temporary situation as the elite talent is expected to age out soon - Think of Madrid's glut of midfield talent who were waiting for Kroos and Modric to finally make some room.

But the managers also have big roles in this regard. Take the Jurgen Klopp approach, where through elite squad building and exceptional man-management, he gets backup options to buy into the team goal so that they don't mind seeing a little less of the pitch.

He successfully juggled having Joe Gomez, Matip and Konaté vying for a position alongside van Dijk, while similarly maintaining multiple great attackers fighting for one position.

The other exception?

When the manager is bigger than any player. Pep Guardiola at Manchester City embodies this perfectly.

He can drop £100m Jack Grealish without a second thought.

He'll bench Haaland if the tactical match-up demands it.

But how many managers have this kind of authority and level of backing from their club?

Not many.

Build around greatness. Die by greatness.

Having world-class players will always be a net positive, but as Liverpool's near-miss with Mohamed Salah's potential Saudi move showed us, even the best-run clubs are just one transfer away from their carefully constructed systems potentially unravelling.

The real art isn't in acquiring world-class talent - it's in building a sustainable ecosystem around them.

EXTRA TIME

Some fun additional links while you are here :

• This video examined the concept in depth through the lens of Rodri

• Try our new guessing game and let me know how many points you got

• Is it too early for Christmas?

As always let me know what you think below, and thank you very much for your time.

FMS