The second ball is where set pieces are actually won

Defences rehearse the first contact for hours and then improvise the five seconds that decide most set piece goals.

Cleared. Header out to the edge of the box, and now eleven players are in the worst positions they will occupy all afternoon. That is the moment worth studying, and it is the moment nobody rehearses.

Defending a delivery is a solved problem in the sense that every side has a plan for it, zonal or man or the usual hybrid, and the plan usually works. The ball gets headed away. What happens next is where the goals come from, because a defence that has just attacked a cross is a defence that is facing its own goal, standing still, spread across a six yard area, with nobody within fifteen metres of the ball. Attacking sides have worked this out and now station two players on the edge specifically for the drop, one to strike and one to keep it alive.

The injury angle is worth mentioning too, since this phase is where a lot of contact injuries happen. Players turning at full stretch from a standing start, in a crowd, off balance, is a bad combination for hamstrings and ankles, and the load in those few seconds is far higher than the tidy cleared header that preceded it. Analysts count aerial duels. The dangerous bit is the deceleration afterwards.

What should change is the job description. Every defensive set piece plan I have seen assigns responsibility for the delivery and treats the edge of the area as a single nominated player, often the smallest one, standing there as a formality. He is outnumbered by design. Two out there is the honest number, and yes, that means one fewer body in the box, which is exactly the trade coaches refuse to make because a goal from a header is blamed on the box and a goal from the edge is called unlucky.

It is not unlucky. It is the most predictable sequence in the game. Ball comes in, ball gets cleared to a zone you can draw on a map before kick-off, and a midfielder arrives into it moving forwards against defenders who are moving backwards.

Any team that wants a cheap improvement should stop clearing to the middle. Clear wide, deliberately, even at the cost of possession. The zone you are afraid of is directly in front of the goal, so stop putting the ball there.