The best overlap is the one nobody passes to

Wide runs that never receive the ball are the most undervalued action in football, and event data cannot see them at all.

Watch the full back sprint outside his winger, arrive at the corner of the box, and get nothing. No pass, no cross, no touch. On the timeline of that match he did not exist. He also just dragged a defender four yards off the line that mattered, and the goal that followed twenty seconds later will be credited to a midfielder who found a gap someone else opened.

I think this is the largest blind spot left in how clubs judge wide players. Every possession value model works backwards from the ball. The run that is never rewarded with a pass generates no event, so it generates no value, so the player who makes forty of them a match reads as a workhorse rather than a creator.

The mechanism is not complicated. A defensive line that has decided to stay compact still has to answer the question of who takes the runner. If the near-side centre back steps out, the space between him and his partner opens by exactly the width of one body, which is all a forward needs. If the winger's own marker turns to track, the winger gets the yard he needs to shift the ball onto his stronger foot. Either answer is a concession.

There is a condition, and it is strict. The run has to be a real one. Defenders read speed better than they read shape, and a jog outside the winger is worse than standing still, because it tells the defender the threat is fake and lets him cheat inside with confidence. So the honest version of this argument is expensive. You are asking a player to make repeated maximum-effort sprints that will mostly end in nothing, several times per attacking sequence, for ninety minutes.

That cost is why sides quietly stopped doing it. The inverted full back was sold as a positional idea, but part of its appeal was that it is cheaper to run. A player stepping into midfield covers less ground at lower speed and touches the ball more, which flatters him in every summary anyone reads.

If I ran a recruitment department I would build one number before any other. Count the maximum-speed runs beyond the ball that end without a touch, then record what the defence did about each one. Half of the wingers currently priced as finishers are being fed by someone that number would find.