Half the overlaps I like end with the ball elsewhere

The run that drags a defender two yards is worth more than the cross it never gets to make.

Nobody claps for a decoy. It is the least rewarded action on a football pitch and probably the one that creates the most goals per unit of effort.

Here is the situation. Winger has the ball, chalk on his boots, a full back in front of him standing square. Behind and outside, his own full back comes charging. Everybody in the stadium can see the overlap coming, including the defender, who now has to solve a problem with no good answer: hold his ground and the overlapping runner receives outside him, or drift half a yard wide to cover and open the inside line.

He drifts. They almost always drift. It is not weakness, it is the correct read of the immediate threat.

And that half yard is the entire product. The winger does not need the overlap to be used. He needs it to exist for one second, because a defender who has shifted his weight outside cannot recover to stop a cut inside, and the cut inside is where the shot is. The overlapping full back completes his forty metre sprint, receives nothing, and jogs back. On the touchline his manager is delighted. On the timeline, he has a blank.

I would argue the second overlap in a sequence matters more than the first. The first is information. The defender learns that this pair runs together. The second is when he pre-empts, opens his hips early, and gets beaten by the thing he thought he had already covered. Which is why the pairs who play this well vary it deliberately: overlap, overlap, then the winger holds the ball and lets the run go past into nothing while he waits for the recovering midfielder to arrive so he can slip a pass behind him.

The mistake I see at every level below the top one is the full back who only runs when he expects the ball. You can spot him instantly. He decelerates at the moment he realises the pass is not coming, and the defender feels that deceleration and steps back inside, and the whole thing collapses.

Run it like you mean it or do not run it. A half committed overlap is worse than none, because it tells the defender exactly how much attention this player deserves.