Between the lines

You have played through the press. The ball is with your #6 just inside their half, and in front of him their 4-4-2 has settled into two lines: four midfielders, four defenders, fifteen metres apart. Between those two lines there is a strip of grass nobody owns. That strip is where chances start.

The pocket has two edges

Your #10's job is to be in it. Not in front of their midfield, where he is one of eleven players the ball can already see, and not on their back line, where a centre-back is standing on his heel. Between: past the midfielders, short of the defenders.

Here he starts a step too deep. He is level with their midfield, and their #8 stands on the line from the ball. The pass does not exist.

Diagram4-2-3-1 vs 4-4-2

Being seen, then having time

One step forward changes both things. Past their midfield the lane from #6 is clear, and the number on the line is the one that matters: the time your #10 has before the nearest defender reaches him. It is their man's run to him minus the ball's flight — the same sum a switch is judged by — and here it comes to 0.8 s. Enough for a touch and a look.

Diagram4-2-3-1 vs 4-4-2

Go one step further and the sum turns against you. He is still between the lines and the lane is still open, but now a centre-back is close enough to arrive with the ball. Open is not enough.

When they sit on the pocket

Good blocks know this. Their midfielders drop a few metres so the strip shrinks, and the lane from your #8 is open only because their #8 is already close enough to close it as the ball lands. Here your #10 receives with nothing: zero seconds.

Diagram4-2-3-1 vs 4-4-2

The answer is not forward — forward runs into him — but across. Ten metres to the right, still between the lines, still in view of the ball, and the same pass now buys half a second. Small moves, made before the pass, are what the good #10s are doing while you watch the ball.

The model in one sentence: the picture is frozen at the pass, the pocket is the strip between the mean line of their midfield and the mean line of their defence, the lane is judged the way every lane here is, and the time on the ball is their nearest man's run minus an 18 m/s pass — nothing about his first touch or which way he is facing.