It's Erling Haaland versus Darwin Nunez with the proper centre-forward back in business for the new season.
I hope both are going head to head for the Golden Boot come May, because they can be a throwback to when a No9 was seen as a match winner and figurehead, rather than part of a fluid system. We have had a decade of the centre forwards in decline at top European level and here. The attitude has been “we don’t need a centre forward as long as we score the requisite amount of goals.”
Pep Guardiola famously played in Champions League games as Barca boss with no centre forwards, a classic false No9. The fact he has now gone for anything but a false No9, actually a real No9 in Erling Haaland tells you you can tinker with the game and modify for a few years but eventually it comes back full circle to the things in football history that have worked.
