Kyle Walker. Please Cross The F***ing Ball.

So many people spotted this during the International Break, so why does he never do it?

Over on YouTube this weekend, a diligent commenter asked me the following…

Putting the answer to one side for a second; what a rare treat it is, in this life, to discover that you’re not actually going mad. Kyle Walker doesn’t ever cross the ball! Other people are noticing this!

Despite having 92 caps and being one the country’s most experienced players, he faces up to a cross with all the icy sweat and stomach-tangling dread he usually reserves for answering a late phone call from his wife.

Here, by way of example, is a small incident from the first half against Greece. While you can see England aren’t exactly “queueing up” in the classical sense for a cross, the backpost area remains wide open, with both Ollie Watkins able to contest a header, and Anthony Gordon able to sneak in.

If nothing else, the space afforded to him when the ball is rolled out by Noni Madueke is the sort of thing you need to punish. Full-backs, in a senior, tense, important international game are normally never allowed that much space in the final-third, and even if the chance of conversion is low it’s worth slinging it in there to give the defenders a scare. They’ll be quicker to close you down next time, potentially opening up space for a team-mate in their panic. It’s basic stuff, Kyle!

By far the most egregious example from the game, though, was this. Which I’ve helpfully illustrated with a sort of radar effect to represent the fact you could fly a fucking stealth bomber through the space Kyle Walker has to put a cross in here.

A 4 v 2 at the back-post, a defender in such acherage of space that would its require own council tax band, and the best he can offer is a foot-on-the-ball and a sideways pass. Managers work their fingers to the bone in training trying to manufacture situations like these! Players are fined week upon week of their wages for not stopping stuff like this!

Kyle Walker, I am on my knees, I am begging, pleading, what are you doing here??? What has some cackling, vengeful witch told you will happen if you ever dare to cross a ball again???

Under normal circumstances, you’d assume this is an instruction from the manager. But a quick glance at the body language of his teammates in a third (and there were more) example shows otherwise…

“Right here if you want to cross it lads!”

“Yes mate! Right here!”

“Fuck’s sake”

You can’t see it in these stills but Jude Bellingham visibly throws his arms around here like a father of three whose inattentive daughters have just caused him to miss a flight. It isn’t just you. It isn’t just me. The actual England team themselves can’t understand why Kyle Walker never crosses the ball.

Look at Bellingham’s posture here! Before Walker’s even bottled the cross and passed it back 5 yards he knows exactly what’s going to happen! That is the shoulder alignment of a man who has seen this all before and is sick to the back arse of it.

And he has seen it all before btw. Walker’s sole attacking contribution at the Euros was, somehow, a product of his own near-Translyvanian fear of crosses. Picking the ball up in an impossibly vast area of space behind the Danish defence, the immediate option to provide Phil Foden a tap-in somehow doesn’t appeal.

Instead, he makes the 10,000 IQ decision to allow the defender to close him down, before panicking, smashing a pass into his shins, which in turn then ricochets away, into a second pair of shins, before somehow stopping dead in the path of Harry Kane. Per 90 minutes in that tournament, and this won’t shock you, Kyle Waker recorded a rate of 0.00 attempted crosses. JUST GET THE BALL IN MAN!! WHY ARE WE DOING THIS??

So what’s the answer? Which is, I presume, why you’re here.

Well, common sense will tell you this is a Pep Guardiola thing. That such is Manchester City’s fetishisation for possession, that Walker has been mentally conditioned to fear a tongue-lashing should he ever attempt something as heretical as a “low percentage ball”… or “a cross”, as normal people call it. But a quick look at Manchester City’s numbers last season tells you it’s slightly more complex.

Believe it or not, Man City are actually one of the Premier League’s top crossers this season. No I’m serious! Just over 21 per 90 minutes, putting them 4th behind Tottenham, Fulham, and Bournemouth. But (!!!) no team in the league has contested less aerial duels than them, meaning that while they’re looking to get the ball wide and then into Haaland, it almost never leaves the ground when doing so.

But Man City aren’t the problem. Or, at least, the way they play isn’t. What we’re actually seeing here is the evolution of Kyle Walker’s role as a club footballer and the impact that has when he’s recast as the old one in his national team. Below is his seasonal heatmap (so, basically, everywhere he went in a season) from the 2019/20 campaign with the most optimal crossing areas highlighted in blue

Not only did he get in there plenty, but he also carried on straight-through for cut-backs, tap-ins, and all manner of other crossing delights. But that was 5 years ago, lads, Manchester City haven’t just changed as a team, they’ve been quietly redefining what it means to be a full-back. This is Kyle Walker’s life now.

There’s virtually no onus on him in City’s current system to get into those areas, and he’s spent the last 2 seasons more or less retraining as a midfielder. Their wide-forwards stretch the opposition's defence, with the number 8s then making underlaps in to support the striker. No buccaneering wide run from the full-back to get in-behind, no shout for a lay-off so they can whip it into a packed penalty area, just some polite hows-your-father-ball-carrying and effective recirculating of possession.

The saying used to be that you couldn’t teach an old dog new tricks but, if football shows you anything, it’s that that statement is bollocks. Kyle Walker is - especially if you read his texts - an old dog, and has successfully learned a number of new tricks from Guardiola. The only problem is, when it then comes to England duty, it turns out he’s forgotten a lot of his original ones in the process.

So there you are, SimonWalander from YouTube, that’s why Kyle Walker doesn’t cross the ball for England. He’s just not that guy any more.