We can say that there are 3 spaces in football: centre, wing and half-space. And all these spaces indicate particular areas.
Let’s start with centre. Because centre is the most central space, obviously, you can attack from centre most directly. But also because centre is the most central space, defending teams cover centre so carefully.
Wing is the widest space in football. You can find space in wing nearly all the time because defending teams have to cover more central spaces. But because wing is the widest space, you can’t go to score goal quickly.
Half-space is a space that confuses defending team’s mind. Because it’s not so central like centre but also it’s not so far away from centre like wing. So first of all, defending teams cover centre but also can’t let half-space completely free for the attacking team.
But also if you think about spaces too much, you miss the most important point. The space that you take position is important but the most important point is not matching with defending team’s any player closely and taking position between players and spaces. Actually because of that half-space is so useful. Because it’s “half-space”. So actually it doesn’t indicate a particular space. It indicates a space that is between two spaces.
Taking position between players and spaces is the most important point because with these things, you can find the most space and you can confuse the most defending players at the same time. If defending team’s players can’t make a decision quickly and clearly about who has to cover which player, they are confused and this time, they try to cover a player with unecessarly too many players or not any player covers attacking team’s player closely and this time, attacking team’s player becomes completely free. So in the end, it helps to attacking team about making game more easily.
With Voronoi Diagram, we can understand better. In football, Voronoi Diagram shows you which player has which spaces. I mean, for example in this situation, this Voronoi Diagram shows us dark blue players’ spaces that they got. This picture is from last season’s first Chelsea Manchester City match in Premier League. Chelsea play with 5-3-2 line up. Manchester City attack.
For attacking team to be effective, they have to take position in defending team’s spaces’ intersection points. Because with this positioning, defending team’s players can’t make a decision about covering attacking team’s player easily.
In this situation, there is only one Manchester City player because we will only focus on his positioning. First of all, he takes position between Chelsea’s right and centre stoppers in their spaces’ intersection points. So it’s not clear which one has to cover this Manchester City player. Also he takes position in Chelsea’s defensive midfielder’s intersection point too. So defensive midfielder has to be careful about this Manchester City player too. So Manchester City’s player confuses 3 Chelsea players at the same time.
In this position, Manchester City’s player took position in half-space and between Chelsea’s midfield and defense lines. It was just literally perfect positioning. But being in half-space or between midfield and forward lines is not perfect all the time. Usually it is the best way to confuse defending team’s mind but usually, not all the time. And if you use the best way all time, in the end, defending teams can find solutions. So you have to focus on taking position between defending team’s players and spaces, not which space that you use.