The final ball

The move has worked. Your winger is on the byline, their back line is turned towards its own goal, and for about a second the box belongs to whoever thought about it first. What happens next is usually decided before the ball is struck, by where three attackers chose to run.

Three addresses, not one

A box has three places worth standing in: the near post, the far post, and the space in front of the six-yard box where a ball rolled backwards arrives. Fill all three and their defenders have a problem they cannot solve — each of them can only watch one.

Fill one of them three times and you have done their job for them. Here all three runners have gone to the near post. The cutback their winger is about to play has nobody to reach, and two thirds of the box is empty.

Diagram4-3-3 vs 4-4-2

Split them up and the same delivery is a chance. Your #9 takes the near post, your #11 the far, and your #10 stops at the edge — which is where the ball was always going.

Diagram4-3-3 vs 4-4-2

Which runner takes which post does not matter much — swap your #9 and #11 and the picture is just as good. What matters is that three different men arrived at three different addresses.

Standing there is not the same as being reachable

Now their midfielder has sprinted back and stopped on the line between the ball and the edge of the box. Your #10 is exactly where you wanted him, in an area no defender is marking, and the cutback is still the wrong ball: it never gets there.

Diagram4-3-3 vs 4-4-2

The two posts are still open — and from the byline they are almost the same line, three and a half degrees apart, so nothing can block one without blocking the other. The near post is the quicker ball and the tighter finish; the far post takes half a second longer in the air and arrives where their centre-back is not. Both are chances, and they are different chances.

Diagram4-3-3 vs 4-4-2

The model in one sentence: this is a ground pass judged like every other pass here — a clear line, the receiver at the aimed point when it arrives, and room measured from where their defenders stand, which in these two exercises is where they started, because the question is which area is free rather than who reacts fastest. Nothing here says the chance is taken: a free man in the box with a second on the ball is the end of what we can measure.