For some years now I think I see a new trend. Central forwards as we know them are going extinct, they change their role, they change the way they play, they change their position on the pitch. It all started with Pep's Barcelona and using these false 9 tactics, using their players' movement to take the central defenders out of their position so they free some space for the fast wingers who cut inside. Then we saw Bayern Munich who ran the show with Ribery and Roben on the wings, although they had a classical big man in the middle he wasn't the goalscorer and the main danger in the opposition box, he used to take the ball down to the wings, play with back towards the goal, trying to free the space for Roben's famous cut inside, shoot with the left. Ribery used to do something similar on the other flank, they were one of the first team to start the inverted wings trend: use left-footed winger on the right and right-footed winger on the left, where their main purpose is not to dribble towards the out line and cross for the forward. Rather than that they cut inside and try to shoot. Nowadays, we have many more examples of this trend. Maybe the best "forward" to do that "move aside, go back so you can free space for the wings" is Bobby Firmino in Liverpool, he's a center forward as a natural position, but his main goal is not scoring, yes he does it, yes he's a great finisher, but his main goal is to free spaces for Salah, Mane and now Jota.
You can see in Firmino's heatmap from 2019/2020 how much space he covers, he often goes back to the central circle to get the ball, he sees the empty areas that opens when defenders try to follow him and he can give the through ball to the players attacking them. This is what allows Salah and Mane to score the numbers of goals they score, and this is what makes the Liverpool trio so good. That's why Liverpool are struggling when he's out of form or missing from the squad, and are so good when he's in the mood. This is why he's always first on the team sheet.
This season we see something similar in Tottenham, Harry Kane changed his game so much, he's not that goalscoring machine he used to be in the last couple of seasons, but he's much more useful for the team play. He goes back, draws the defenders out of their natural positions, frees the space that's attacked by Son and Bergwijn, and they can use their speed to often go to 1v1 situations against defenders that are way slower than them.
This heatmap is the proof about this change, he's more of a team player now. And maybe that's one of the reasons Tottenham are joint top of the league, and more and more pundits start to see them as a genuine title contender, despite Morinho's "Little pony" tactics. In Arsenal on the other hand Aubameyang and Lacazette changed their game from playing in the position of the central forward to moving aside to the wing. They often change their places and even when they play in the same time, they are not like the classical forward duos, one of them is always on the wing and the other is attacking the box. The situation at Manchester United with Rashford and Martial is similar, but in both their cases their main positions used to be on the wings. But their partnership is very similar to Arsenal's duo, they swap places on the wings and in the center. And from that benefits Bruno Fernandes who with his vision and passing ability can find either of them in the half-spaces between the central defenders and fullbacks, behind central defenders backs or can find a spot to shoot. If a big central forward like Romelu Lukaku who was whining about playing on the wing in Man U, can change his game to an attacker who plays mainly on the wing in Inter, forming a great duo with Lautaro Martinez, maybe this trend wil get more and more popular and the type of forwards we used to adore as kids like Van Basten, Ronaldo, Folwer, Rush, Van Nistelroy, Inzaghi, etc. will be a rarer sight in the future. This is my first article so I'll look forward to ideas, advises, thoughts and everything about the topic, my writing, future topics or just a chat about football.
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