Compactness is measured up and down and lost side to side

Every analysis of a defensive block talks about vertical distance, while the goals come from the far-side winger being late.

Thirty-five metres from the last defender to the striker. That is the number coaches quote, it is the number the graphics show, and it describes only one of the two directions in which a block can fail.

The other one is lateral and it decides more matches. When the ball is switched from one touchline to the other, the block has to slide, and the last man to complete that slide is almost always the far-side winger, who is furthest from the ball, tired, and least invested in a defensive action twenty metres from where he wants to be. He arrives half a second late. The full back behind him then has a decision he should never have had to make, which is whether to step out and leave the space inside him or hold and let the cross come.

I would put it strongly. Most well-drilled European blocks are vertically excellent and laterally mediocre, and good opponents know exactly where the seam is. That is why the fashionable attacking pattern is not a through ball at all, it is a slow switch followed by an immediate one-two on the second touch, before the shift has settled.

The reason it persists is that vertical compactness can be trained without much cost, but lateral compactness costs your wingers their legs. A team that slides properly for ninety minutes has two wide players who cannot run in the last twenty, which is a direct trade against your own counter attack. Most coaches make the trade quietly and hope the switch does not come.

There is a structural fix and it is unfashionable, because it means accepting a lopsided team. Let the far winger stay high and defend with a back five, or drop him permanently and defend with a genuine midfield trio, but stop asking a wide forward to be occasionally excellent at a task that only works if it is done every single time.

Half measures in the block are worse than either extreme. The ball only needs to find the gap once.