Even football supporters who have been following the game for years can sometimes be a little bit flummoxed by the use of terminology that seems to come out of nowhere. You can have been a fan of the game for decades, even having played it at various levels, yet all of a sudden a term can be being used left, right and centre that you need to pretend you know what it means in order not to look foolish.
One such term is ‘false nine’, which had barely seen the light of day before suddenly being used by broadcasters and managers alike around the mid-2010s, but the question is: what does it mean?
Not a Typical Striker
When it comes to attacking players, there are several different roles that they can be expected to fulfil during the course of a football match. The most common attacking position is that of a striker, who plays further forward than any other player and will often be asked to do things such as get on the end of crosses or run onto through balls in order to score goals for their team. Then there are the likes of a second striker, who will sit a little deeper and work alongside a typical striker to occupy opposition defences and get onto second balls and so on. If they play out wide, they might be referred to as an outside forward.
Two big takeaways from the Spirit’s win against Seattle:
1) using Leicy or Croix as a false nine when Monday isn’t in the match may be the smartest decision. It adds space for Trin and Cantore.
2. Abiodun and Hershfelt may be an unstoppable midfield combo.
— Jordan (@sportsbystats.bsky.social) Sep 7, 2025 at 23:10
Inverted wingers are players that are ostensibly thought of as being players running down the outside line, but can also come inside in order to score goals. Perhaps the best example of this kind of player is Mohamed Salah, who was considered to be a midfielder by the Premier League’s Fantasy Football system, yet regularly won the Golden Boot thanks to the goals that he scored. Meanwhile, it was a fellow Liverpool player named Roberto Firmino who was considered to be the archetypal false nine, playing as a lone striker but regularly dropping deeper in order to stitch play together.
One of the big problems for opposition defences when a team is playing with a false nine is that the defenders can often be unsure about whether they should go with them or not. If they choose to do so, they can then vacate space for other attacking players to occupy, whilst if they remain in place then the player operating as a false nine can have plenty of room in which to operate. In essence, they operate as a link-up player between the midfield and the rest of the attack, whilst also being able to score goals themselves, which makes them a nightmare for certain defenders to play against.