The Death of the 9.5: Does Modern Football Have Space for the Positionless Player?
I remember a time when football used to celebrate players who blurred positional lines. Notably, Francesco Totti at Roma and Dennis Bergkamp at Arsenal thrived in undefined spaces between midfield and attack, their creativity simply too valuable to constrain to a defined position. Systems were bent around them, granting freedom to float and create. In today’s game, however, few teams can afford that luxury. Tactical systems demand clarity, discipline, and collective responsibility. For the modern “9.5,” a player that is not quite a striker but not quite a number 10, the free role has often turned into a liability when a team is out of possession.
No player embodies this dilemma today more than João Félix. With the ball, Félix is poetry: dancing past defenders, threading passes between the lines, and combining with teammates in tight spaces. Without the ball, Felix struggles to offer the pressing intensity of a forward or the defensive discipline of his peer midfielders. At Atlético Madrid, it was clear he never fit into Diego Simeone’s suffocating defensive scheme. At Barcelona, despite flashes of brilliance, the team’s financial crisis prevented permanence. At Chelsea, he was blocked by the emergence of Cole Palmer, who was undisputedly better both with and without the ball. Now at AC Milan, he remains an enigma: a wonderkid that has been around for years dazzling in moments, yet still searching for a system that can accommodate his artistry.
The numbers fuel the cynicism around his career. Félix, one of the most expensive players of all time, has swapped clubs four times in the past three years, totaling just 37 league goals in over five seasons since leaving Benfica. To some, he is an overhyped luxury player, a symbol of modern football’s excesses. To others, he remains a flagbearer for creativity and beauty in an increasingly mechanical game, an empathetic figure simply trapped in the wrong era.
This tension is not unique to Félix. Christopher Nkunku has floundered at Chelsea due to a lack of a defined role. Joshua Zirkzee has struggled at Manchester United, his playmaking striker style clashing with the club’s demand for a traditional number nine. Even Kai Havertz was labeled a positionless enigma, drifting between various roles at Chelsea and receiving significant abuse from fans before being redefined at Arsenal. Under Mikel Arteta, Havertz has been remolded into a link-up number nine, much like he was under Tuchel’s Chelsea. His reinvention suggests that the death of the 9.5 is not inevitable, but survival requires transformation. Whether or not he will lose his spot to Victor Gyökeres consistently remains to be seen.
The broader context explains why so many 9.5s struggle. Football has increasingly become built on pressing triggers and repeatable patterns, demanding that every player work tirelessly off the ball. The high-intensity running of counterpressing systems leaves limited space for a free-roaming trequartista. Even when technically versatile, players like Félix often lack the relentless work rate or defensive discipline to track full-backs and manage pressing triggers that most managers now require. Where once a team would be built around its individual genius, today’s elite clubs clearly prioritize positional fluidity and collective effort over individual luxury.
Still, it is difficult not to feel a lingering sense of melancholy. Imagine Félix in Serie A during the 1990s: socks rolled down, floating behind a big striker, and given license to paint in broad strokes like Rui Costa or Roberto Mancini. Instead, he is caught in an era that demands steel before silk. Whether Milan offers him a final refuge or just another cameo remains to be seen, although history makes me believe it will unfortunately be the latter. For now, the 9.5 problem represents both a symbol of football’s evolution and of the beauty it may be leaving behind.
