Hey guys, this is something I was thinking about for a long time: Why don't any football teams seem to have a "man-marking" specialist, as a kind of utility player? What I mean is, a player who doesn't have that great football skills but is extremely fast and fit [like a track and field middle distance sprinter, or an American Football running back], who will just always stay right next to a star player for ninety minutes and mark them out of the game. This seems like an economical way for poorer clubs to try to compete with the top teams. Against a team like Roma, for example, it would be well worth it to just give up one man to mark Totti wherever he is on the pitch for the full ninety minutes and eliminate him from the game. It's not possible to mark a player out of the game absolutely completely, but talented runners who specialized in this skill could come pretty close imo. Or is it?
I think if the player you wanted to mark was that good in the first place, he would be guaranteed to beat the man marker at least a few times during 90 minutes, and it could only take once for something to happen, so you'd lost a man for full game and still not get a job done. But yeah it does seem to work a lot, there have been a few occasions this season where 1 or 2 players have focused on Ronaldo (for example) and kept him almost silent the whole match, but when some other teams have tried it he has still been capable of doing damage.
