The striker's first step decides where the pass goes

Pressing is usually described as running at people, when the part that works is the angle of approach that closes one option.

The forward starts running. That is the bit everybody sees and the bit that gets praised, usually as work rate. The part that determines whether the press succeeds happened before the running, in the shape of the first stride.

A defender in possession has several passes available. The presser cannot take them all away, so he approaches on a curve that puts his body between the ball and the most dangerous one, and by doing that he does not so much force a mistake as narrow the menu. The centre back can still play. He can only play where he is being allowed to play, which is usually sideways or backwards or into the specific area where three teammates are already waiting.

This is why pressing statistics that count distance covered or pressures applied tell you very little. Two forwards can run identical amounts and produce completely different games. One arrives square on, leaving both passing options open, and the ball goes past him. The other arrives at an angle nobody notices, and the ball goes exactly where his team wanted it to go, and he does not touch it or appear anywhere in the data.

Coaches call the covered option a shadow, and the skill has become a selection criterion. A forward who scores twenty and presses straight is now a genuinely difficult player to fit into a good side, which would have sounded absurd a generation ago and is simply true today.

The mechanism scales. If the first presser closes the central pass, the second presser knows the ball is going wide and can start moving before it is played, which is where the interceptions come from. Pressing traps are just several people making the same assumption at the same time, and the assumption is only safe if the first man's angle was right. One lazy approach and the whole structure is chasing.

The argument against is fatigue, and it is real. Curved running is longer than straight running, and doing it for ninety minutes across a congested season is part of why these teams break down in February.

But the alternative is not less running. It is the same running, aimed nowhere in particular, which is the most expensive thing a football team can do.