Everybody moved into the half-space and left the touchline empty

The fashionable inside channel is now the most congested strip on the pitch, which makes the old-fashioned wide man valuable again.

There was a period when finding the channel between the centre back and the full back felt like a secret. Coaches drew it, analysts named it, and teams that occupied it well pulled defences apart because nobody had a settled answer. That period is over. Everyone occupies it now, defences are organised around it, and the strip has become the busiest real estate in the sport.

Which changes the value of the alternative. If an opposing back four has been drilled to protect the inside channels, and their midfield has been told to screen them, then the pitch is at its thinnest near the touchline, and the player standing out there against one defender is in a genuine one against one with acres behind him. That used to be an ordinary situation. It is now, in a lot of matches, the least defended situation available.

The mechanism is just occupancy. There is a finite number of defenders and they cannot cover everything, so a coaching orthodoxy that concentrates attackers in one area concentrates defenders there too, and eventually the returns collapse. Positional play has always understood this in theory. In practice, teams keep pushing bodies into the same fashionable pocket because that is what the analysis department is measuring and rewarding.

I would also argue the half-space obsession has quietly degraded a skill. Crossing from a standing position while a defender leans on you, delivering with the outside of the boot, whipping one behind the last man from a tight angle, these are craft skills that took years to build and they are being coached out of players who are told the cross is a low value action. It is a low value action when it is a hopeful ball into a crowd. It is a high value action when the winger has beaten his man and the defence is scrambling backwards, and the two are lumped together in the same bucket by every model I have seen.

The clubs that will benefit are the ones willing to look unfashionable for a season. Buy the awkward wide player nobody rates because he does not combine in tight areas. Give him the touchline, give him isolation, and let the opposition's compact modern shape be the reason he is unmarked.

Space is not a property of a zone. It is a property of where everyone else has decided to stand.

Right now, everyone else has decided to stand inside.