What Is A Half-Space In Soccer? Football Tactics Explained
If you regularly watch videos or listen to podcasts dedicated to football tactics, you probably will have come across the phrase 'half-space' at some point. It's often thrown around by tactics experts but there's still plenty of confusion amongst average fans about exactly what this term means.
In this article we're going to be addressing that issue, explaining what people mean by a half space in soccer and fleshing out why this aspect of the game is so important in an age of ever-increasing tactical awareness and fluency amongst supporters. We'll wrap things up by diving into some of the current players who are known for their ability to operate effectively in half-spaces on the pitch.
What Is A Half-Space In Football?
In order to understand some of the more technical conversations that take place around modern football, it's important to get past the confusing jargon. The broad idea of a half-space will be pretty familiar to most avid football fans, it's just this precise way of describing it that many people need to come to terms with.
In order to understand half spaces, you need to understand the idea of lines and blocks. Football formations are divided into set blocks or units: defence, midfield, and attack. If a team uses a 4-4-2 formation, they will have a defensive block of four, followed by a relatively flat midfield block of four, and a front two. If the coach chooses to employ a low block system, the objective of the team will be to sit deep and remain compact, limiting space between the defence and midfield blocks.
To get through this system, opposition players will try to find space between the lines. Central to positional play, the idea of getting between the lines is familiar to many football fans, and it essentially means finding space in the gaps between defence, midfield, and attack. By getting between the lines, attackers can drag defensive players out of position and create positional overloads in important areas.
The term half space also refers to gaps in key areas of the pitch, but instead of talking about vertical lines (defence, midfield, attack), half spaces are all about the spaces between horizontal lines.
For example, if we divide the field of play into five horizontal lines, we end up with the wide left area of the pitch, the wide right area of the pitch, the central area of the pitch, and then two connecting horizontal areas between the wings and the central space. These areas connecting the wide zones to the central zone are what we refer to as 'half-spaces'.
The two half-spaces on the pitch are not fixed areas; they can shift in shape and size throughout the game, depending on how things play out tactically. If a defending team packs a certain central part of the pitch with lots of bodies, opposition attackers may find that the half-space can be found wider than they initially expected. Similarly, the half-space can be closer to the middle of the pitch on other occasions. Players looking to exploit half spaces in an attacking sense must be able to understand how these zones are shifting in real time, otherwise it will be difficult to make the most of the gaps available to them.
Where Does This Term Come From?
The term 'half-space' comes from the German word 'halbraum', and it's thought that the person who popularised it is the pioneering German tactician Rene Maric, whose excellent tactics writing led to him being hired by RB Salzburg as an assistant coach.
He's since worked closely with former Salzburg boss Marco Rose, following him to Borussia Monchengladbach and Borussia Dortmund before ultimately being poached by Bundesliga giants Bayern Munich, who created a brand new role for him and have relied on him heavily for helping with coaching development and style of play in recent seasons.
In an interview with The Athletic, Maric explained that “A half-space is just a visualisation... It’s a tool, like formations are a tool. Football is a very easy game. It may sometimes sound more complicated than it is, especially if you read my articles…”
However, there's no doubt that the Austrian coach has coined a useful way of describing this tactic. By asking players to think about whether to "occupy the middle, or do I open it by being in the half-spaces and then, when the opponent closes down, attack the middle dynamically?" he's brought big upsides to the attacking teams he's worked with.
Why Are Half-Spaces So Important In Football?
Football is all about finding space and exploiting it, working out how to disrupt your opposition's shape and punish them by moving into the gaps they've left behind. For that reason, half-spaces are crucial. By operating effectively within the half space, forward-minded players can escape the congestion of the most central areas while opening up their body across the pitch in a way that a basic wing position would not allow.
One of many uses of these zones can be against the ball for pressing. Example: Ball in right half space vs 4-2-2-2. pic.twitter.com/uYMaCLBPCn
— René Marić (@ReneMaric) January 5, 2016
These positional considerations are crucial. When a player is in the right half-space, for example, their body positioning is more advantageous than if they were wider on the right wing. This is because while a player in a wide area can only pass forwards, backwards or infield (while a player in a central area faces more congestion and less space or vision to different options), players in half spaces can orientate their body towards goal while also having a variety of passing options: infield to central areas (which is far easier to execute from a half-space than from a wide area where the pass is more likely to get cut out), out wide to wingers or full-backs, forward to more advanced attackers, and behind to other midfielders.
In the half-spaces, midfielders can end up having a much better understanding and vision of the players around them and the attacking opportunities in front of them. They've got more options to pass to, and as a result they can progress attacks more effectively. Given that football is all about finding space in attack, and denying space in defensive areas, half spaces are super important.
According to the football media platform Tifo, half spaces "often mirror the gaps between full-backs and centre-backs and are therefore similar to what are sometimes called the channels. Just as there is space vertically between the lines, there is often more space horizontally in the half space because of the natural positioning of the defenders: not too close, but not too far from each other either."
Some more traditional managers might understandably question the use of overly-technical-sounding terms like half-space, but in fact, this concept has clear parallels with the old-school strategy of directing long balls high and wide into the channels.
Which Players Are Best At Using Half-Spaces?
When we talk about half-spaces, we tend to focus on how they can be exploited by attackers. Plenty of defensive actions take place in these areas, of course, and they can be important in progressing the ball up the pitch from deeper positions. For example, ball-playing centre-backs like Mats Hummels have consistently been praised by tacticians like Maric for their ability to drive with the ball into half-spaces and thereby create new passing lanes and drag opponents out of position.
However, in this section of the article, we're going to be focusing mainly on the more overtly attack-minded use of the half space in modern football, running through the midfielders, wingers, and forwards who are best known for their half-space ability in the modern era.
Kevin De Bruyne
Given his huge tactical influence over the modern game, you may not be surprised to hear that Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola is widely viewed as one of the half-space masters. He regularly targets these zones in order to manipulate the defensive shape of the other team, and while he likes all his players to be useful in these scenarios, perhaps the best of the lot in recent years has been Kevin De Bruyne.
In their title-winning 2021/22 Premier League campaign, City had more half-space touches than any other team and De Bruyne was absolutely essential to that; the Belgian playmaker is incredibly good at finding space between the wide right hand side and the centre of the pitch in particular, and his ability to deliver crosses and defence-splitting passes from these positions has allowed him to become one of the players with the most assists in Premier League history.
Lionel Messi
According to The Times, "the left and right halfspaces in the final third are the most tactically troubling for defenders — if they step up to apply pressure they leave dangerous space in behind, and if they allow a player to receive the ball there, they are immediately under threat."
During his incredible 2022 World Cup-winning campaign — and throughout his career more broadly — Argentina captain Lionel Messi consistently wreaked havoc on opposition defences by dribbling or drifting into these areas, picking up the ball and spraying killer passes into the final third. He's a true half-space master.
David Silva
Yet another Guardiola disciple who has won virtually everything there is to win in club football, David Silva was one of Spain's iconic 2010 World Cup-winning stars, and his dazzling performances at that tournament often hinged around his ability to drift into half-spaces and receive the ball with numerous advantageous passing lanes at his disposal.
This skill contribute heavily towards Silva's status as one of the greatest attacking midfielders of the 2010s. At his peak he was a joy to watch, and that ability to exploit the gaps between central and wide areas was always central to his game.
If you'd like to find out about another term commonly used in tactical analysis that was coined and developed in Germany, check out our guide to gegenpressing, a strategy that has become extremely popular in the modern game across world football.
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