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Soccer player numbers by position4/12/2024 Today, teams play in more defensive formations with four defenders and either three midfielders and three forwards or four midfielders and two forwards. Chelsea played with two defenders, three midfielders, and a whopping five forwards. Unfortunately for modern soccer viewers, the teams of the 1920s played a very different formation from ones that are common today. Of the 11 players on the field, they started with the most defensive player, the goalie, and counted upwards from one to 11, going from right to left when players were on the same line. Instead of giving their players a choice, the team assigned numbers by position. It began in the 1920s in England with the club team Chelsea. Having players wear numbers on the back of their jerseys is actually a relatively modern phenomenon. We’ll run through the history first and then get to the modern meanings. Luckily, only a few positions are commonly referred to by number and they are quite easy to learn. Third, the meaning of the numbers has evolved over time in twisted ways so that they can no longer be said to be intuitive. Second, there was once an assumption that a player would wear the number of the position he played but that’s no longer the case. First, there are 11 players on the field for each team and remembering 11 positions by number is difficult. The use of numbers in soccer is legitimately confusing for a few reasons. It’s typical in basketball to refer to a player’s position by number but at least there, there are only five positions to keep track of and a player’s jersey number virtually never matches his position as it sometimes does in soccer. In American football, the NFL regulates jersey numbers so that each position has a set of numbers only its players are eligible to wear. The use of a number system to refer to positions is not unusual in sports. Numbers are often used in soccer to refer to a player’s position. Why do some numbers in soccer refer to positions? What do they mean?
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