Why defensive midfield role is easier than attacking midfield role in football

by Mustapha Othman
(Kaduna, Kaduna State, Nigeria)

I know a reasonable amount of people would disagree with my title. More than 70% of which I'm sure have either played football as attacking midfielders only or have never played comprehensive football at all. My reason for the above judgment is due to my own experience in the field of play.

I've played several positions in football. I've played as a central forward, right midfielder, attacking midfielder and defensive midfielder. What I've come to discover is that in order to play well as a defensive midfielder, one needs a lot of physical exercises. In fact, one needs more of physical strength and stamina than skills.

On the other hand, if one is to play well as an attacking midfielder, physical strength and stamina alone is not enough. One also needs to "marry the ball" i.e. one needs to work on his mental and physical skills with the ball. This can be done by extra ball work to improve on one's ball control, passing accuracy, body feint, shooting techniques, shooting accuracy and so on.

I've noticed that whenever I play as a defensive midfielder, I hardly even see the chance to try out any ball skill or dribble because there's always someone to pass the ball to. But when I play as an attacking midfielder, I sometimes get confused on who is the right person to pass to as there are several options on which one might be better than the other.

Or I sometimes run out of time with the ball due to bad control or lacking what to do with the ball as all my teammates are marked. Finally the greatest difficulty in playing as an attacking midfielder is that you are the one being expected to create goal scoring plans.

An attacking midfielder's main aim is to create scoring chances which is a lot more difficult than preventing goals by marking an opponent tight as a defensive midfielder.