It is 25 years ago this month since the most dramatic intervention by a substitute in any Champions League final, Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s strike which sealed Manchester United’s extraordinary injury-time turnaround against Bayern München.
The Norwegian is far from the only substitute to have settled a European Cup or Champions League final. Juary was the first for Porto against Bayern in 1987 while Juliano Belletti completed Barcelona’s comeback against Arsenal in 2006 (inspired by a brilliant cameo by fellow substitute Henrik Larsson). A word too for Lars Ricken, the 20-year-old who capped Borussia Dortmund’s 1997 triumph over Juventus by adding their third goal 20 seconds after his introduction.
The reason for this reminiscing is that TV commentators at Wembley on 1 June may well want a list of scoring final substitutes at hand given the growing tendency for players to make an impact off the bench in this era of five permitted changes per team. This season’s Champions League group stage offered a case in point: of the 21 matches with a decisive late goal (scored after the 75-minute mark), 15 came from a substitute. For an example from the knockout stage, meanwhile, look no further than Barcelona’s 3-2 quarter-final win at Paris Saint-Germain where, with their respective first touches after coming on for the visitors, Pedri set up the second goal and Andreas Christensen scored the third.
According to one leading national-team coach, the change to five substitutes, initially introduced during the pandemic, has produced a mentality shift among players who today are much more accepting of a role on the bench. “It has allowed you to have your players more engaged,” he says. “You can tell them, ‘You’re not playing today but you are playing the next one’ or ‘You’ll start this game and finish the next one.’”
We have come a long way from the days when to be ‘subbed off’ was seen as proof a player had not performed and could lead to boots flying – and a few expletives too. Next year will bring the 60th anniversary of the first substitution in English league football when Keith Peacock came on for Charlton Athletic against Bolton Wanderers in a second-tier match on 21 August 1965. Prior to that teams had to battle on with injured players; now they had one substitute in the event of an injury. By the end of 1965/66, the English football authorities decided it was impossible for the referee to decide when a player was genuinely injured and so amended the rulebook to allow substitutions to be made for any reason.
Some might say the first ‘supersub’ was David Fairclough, the former Liverpool forward whose autobiography is called just that. Graham Smith, an accomplished youth coach at Everton during the 1980s, wrote a PhD about the greater tactical sophistication brought into English football by European coaches and remembers how in the days of a single permitted substitute, managers would generally opt for “an impact player — usually a forward”. The pacy Fairclough fitted that bill, scoring 18 goals as a Liverpool substitute, most famously the winner against St- Étienne in a European Cup quarter-final fightback at Anfield in 1977.
It is 25 years ago this month since the most dramatic intervention by a substitute in any Champions League final, Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s strike which sealed Manchester United’s extraordinary injury-time turnaround against Bayern München.
The Norwegian is far from the only substitute to have settled a European Cup or Champions League final. Juary was the first for Porto against Bayern in 1987 while Juliano Belletti completed Barcelona’s comeback against Arsenal in 2006 (inspired by a brilliant cameo by fellow substitute Henrik Larsson). A word too for Lars Ricken, the 20-year-old who capped Borussia Dortmund’s 1997 triumph over Juventus by adding their third goal 20 seconds after his introduction.
The reason for this reminiscing is that TV commentators at Wembley on 1 June may well want a list of scoring final substitutes at hand given the growing tendency for players to make an impact off the bench in this era of five permitted changes per team. This season’s Champions League group stage offered a case in point: of the 21 matches with a decisive late goal (scored after the 75-minute mark), 15 came from a substitute. For an example from the knockout stage, meanwhile, look no further than Barcelona’s 3-2 quarter-final win at Paris Saint-Germain where, with their respective first touches after coming on for the visitors, Pedri set up the second goal and Andreas Christensen scored the third.
According to one leading national-team coach, the change to five substitutes, initially introduced during the pandemic, has produced a mentality shift among players who today are much more accepting of a role on the bench. “It has allowed you to have your players more engaged,” he says. “You can tell them, ‘You’re not playing today but you are playing the next one’ or ‘You’ll start this game and finish the next one.’”
We have come a long way from the days when to be ‘subbed off’ was seen as proof a player had not performed and could lead to boots flying – and a few expletives too. Next year will bring the 60th anniversary of the first substitution in English league football when Keith Peacock came on for Charlton Athletic against Bolton Wanderers in a second-tier match on 21 August 1965. Prior to that teams had to battle on with injured players; now they had one substitute in the event of an injury. By the end of 1965/66, the English football authorities decided it was impossible for the referee to decide when a player was genuinely injured and so amended the rulebook to allow substitutions to be made for any reason.
Some might say the first ‘supersub’ was David Fairclough, the former Liverpool forward whose autobiography is called just that. Graham Smith, an accomplished youth coach at Everton during the 1980s, wrote a PhD about the greater tactical sophistication brought into English football by European coaches and remembers how in the days of a single permitted substitute, managers would generally opt for “an impact player — usually a forward”. The pacy Fairclough fitted that bill, scoring 18 goals as a Liverpool substitute, most famously the winner against St- Étienne in a European Cup quarter-final fightback at Anfield in 1977.
At the other end of the East Lancs Road, in the red half of Manchester, they will tell you Solskjær is the ultimate ‘supersub’ — and not just for his Champions League-winning strike of 1999. He marked his debut for the club with a goal six minutes after coming off the bench against Blackburn Rovers in 1996. His final United goal, 11 years later, was also against Blackburn — and also six minutes after being sent on by Sir Alex Ferguson. Overall, 29 of his 126 United goals came in games he did not start, including — remarkably — four in the last 18 minutes of a fixture at Nottingham Forest in 1999.
In his second autobiography Sir Alex explains that, as a young player, the Norwegian had lacked physical strength and aggression yet his “analytical mind” meant he could prosper when space appeared late in matches. “In games, sitting on the bench, and in training sessions, he would make notes, always,” he wrote. “So by the time he came on he had analysed who the opponents were, what positions they were assuming. He had those images all worked out. The game was laid out for him like a diagram and he knew where to go and when.”
Today, a quarter of a century on from Solskjær’s prime, the substitute has become all the more important in an age of larger squads and even greater player rotation. In United’s 1999 treble-winning campaign, six players started 30 league matches or more; that figure was three for Manchester City in 2022/23. An even more arresting comparison is with Fairclough’s 1976/77 Liverpool side, for whom seven players began 57 games or more in all competitions; the most for City last term was Rodri with 52.
Data has enabled the modern-day approach according to David Adams, chief football officer of the Football Association of Wales and a UEFA match observer. “The loading of players is well documented, and players pick up on the fact they can’t play three games in ten days consistently over the season,” he says. “With the amount of data collected on each player, you can use this to explain why you’re not starting a player but may have a plan for him to start a midweek game instead.
“A lot of coaches now refer to their team as starters and finishers rather than subs to recognise the importance of how you finish a game as much as how you start a game.” Finishers, eh. It certainly beats the old ‘benchwarmer’ tag, and would sum up a player like Solskjær perfectly.
It is 25 years ago this month since the most dramatic intervention by a substitute in any Champions League final, Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s strike which sealed Manchester United’s extraordinary injury-time turnaround against Bayern München.
The Norwegian is far from the only substitute to have settled a European Cup or Champions League final. Juary was the first for Porto against Bayern in 1987 while Juliano Belletti completed Barcelona’s comeback against Arsenal in 2006 (inspired by a brilliant cameo by fellow substitute Henrik Larsson). A word too for Lars Ricken, the 20-year-old who capped Borussia Dortmund’s 1997 triumph over Juventus by adding their third goal 20 seconds after his introduction.
The reason for this reminiscing is that TV commentators at Wembley on 1 June may well want a list of scoring final substitutes at hand given the growing tendency for players to make an impact off the bench in this era of five permitted changes per team. This season’s Champions League group stage offered a case in point: of the 21 matches with a decisive late goal (scored after the 75-minute mark), 15 came from a substitute. For an example from the knockout stage, meanwhile, look no further than Barcelona’s 3-2 quarter-final win at Paris Saint-Germain where, with their respective first touches after coming on for the visitors, Pedri set up the second goal and Andreas Christensen scored the third.
According to one leading national-team coach, the change to five substitutes, initially introduced during the pandemic, has produced a mentality shift among players who today are much more accepting of a role on the bench. “It has allowed you to have your players more engaged,” he says. “You can tell them, ‘You’re not playing today but you are playing the next one’ or ‘You’ll start this game and finish the next one.’”
We have come a long way from the days when to be ‘subbed off’ was seen as proof a player had not performed and could lead to boots flying – and a few expletives too. Next year will bring the 60th anniversary of the first substitution in English league football when Keith Peacock came on for Charlton Athletic against Bolton Wanderers in a second-tier match on 21 August 1965. Prior to that teams had to battle on with injured players; now they had one substitute in the event of an injury. By the end of 1965/66, the English football authorities decided it was impossible for the referee to decide when a player was genuinely injured and so amended the rulebook to allow substitutions to be made for any reason.
Some might say the first ‘supersub’ was David Fairclough, the former Liverpool forward whose autobiography is called just that. Graham Smith, an accomplished youth coach at Everton during the 1980s, wrote a PhD about the greater tactical sophistication brought into English football by European coaches and remembers how in the days of a single permitted substitute, managers would generally opt for “an impact player — usually a forward”. The pacy Fairclough fitted that bill, scoring 18 goals as a Liverpool substitute, most famously the winner against St- Étienne in a European Cup quarter-final fightback at Anfield in 1977.
It is 25 years ago this month since the most dramatic intervention by a substitute in any Champions League final, Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s strike which sealed Manchester United’s extraordinary injury-time turnaround against Bayern München.
The Norwegian is far from the only substitute to have settled a European Cup or Champions League final. Juary was the first for Porto against Bayern in 1987 while Juliano Belletti completed Barcelona’s comeback against Arsenal in 2006 (inspired by a brilliant cameo by fellow substitute Henrik Larsson). A word too for Lars Ricken, the 20-year-old who capped Borussia Dortmund’s 1997 triumph over Juventus by adding their third goal 20 seconds after his introduction.
The reason for this reminiscing is that TV commentators at Wembley on 1 June may well want a list of scoring final substitutes at hand given the growing tendency for players to make an impact off the bench in this era of five permitted changes per team. This season’s Champions League group stage offered a case in point: of the 21 matches with a decisive late goal (scored after the 75-minute mark), 15 came from a substitute. For an example from the knockout stage, meanwhile, look no further than Barcelona’s 3-2 quarter-final win at Paris Saint-Germain where, with their respective first touches after coming on for the visitors, Pedri set up the second goal and Andreas Christensen scored the third.
According to one leading national-team coach, the change to five substitutes, initially introduced during the pandemic, has produced a mentality shift among players who today are much more accepting of a role on the bench. “It has allowed you to have your players more engaged,” he says. “You can tell them, ‘You’re not playing today but you are playing the next one’ or ‘You’ll start this game and finish the next one.’”
We have come a long way from the days when to be ‘subbed off’ was seen as proof a player had not performed and could lead to boots flying – and a few expletives too. Next year will bring the 60th anniversary of the first substitution in English league football when Keith Peacock came on for Charlton Athletic against Bolton Wanderers in a second-tier match on 21 August 1965. Prior to that teams had to battle on with injured players; now they had one substitute in the event of an injury. By the end of 1965/66, the English football authorities decided it was impossible for the referee to decide when a player was genuinely injured and so amended the rulebook to allow substitutions to be made for any reason.
Some might say the first ‘supersub’ was David Fairclough, the former Liverpool forward whose autobiography is called just that. Graham Smith, an accomplished youth coach at Everton during the 1980s, wrote a PhD about the greater tactical sophistication brought into English football by European coaches and remembers how in the days of a single permitted substitute, managers would generally opt for “an impact player — usually a forward”. The pacy Fairclough fitted that bill, scoring 18 goals as a Liverpool substitute, most famously the winner against St- Étienne in a European Cup quarter-final fightback at Anfield in 1977.
It is 25 years ago this month since the most dramatic intervention by a substitute in any Champions League final, Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s strike which sealed Manchester United’s extraordinary injury-time turnaround against Bayern München.
The Norwegian is far from the only substitute to have settled a European Cup or Champions League final. Juary was the first for Porto against Bayern in 1987 while Juliano Belletti completed Barcelona’s comeback against Arsenal in 2006 (inspired by a brilliant cameo by fellow substitute Henrik Larsson). A word too for Lars Ricken, the 20-year-old who capped Borussia Dortmund’s 1997 triumph over Juventus by adding their third goal 20 seconds after his introduction.
The reason for this reminiscing is that TV commentators at Wembley on 1 June may well want a list of scoring final substitutes at hand given the growing tendency for players to make an impact off the bench in this era of five permitted changes per team. This season’s Champions League group stage offered a case in point: of the 21 matches with a decisive late goal (scored after the 75-minute mark), 15 came from a substitute. For an example from the knockout stage, meanwhile, look no further than Barcelona’s 3-2 quarter-final win at Paris Saint-Germain where, with their respective first touches after coming on for the visitors, Pedri set up the second goal and Andreas Christensen scored the third.
According to one leading national-team coach, the change to five substitutes, initially introduced during the pandemic, has produced a mentality shift among players who today are much more accepting of a role on the bench. “It has allowed you to have your players more engaged,” he says. “You can tell them, ‘You’re not playing today but you are playing the next one’ or ‘You’ll start this game and finish the next one.’”
We have come a long way from the days when to be ‘subbed off’ was seen as proof a player had not performed and could lead to boots flying – and a few expletives too. Next year will bring the 60th anniversary of the first substitution in English league football when Keith Peacock came on for Charlton Athletic against Bolton Wanderers in a second-tier match on 21 August 1965. Prior to that teams had to battle on with injured players; now they had one substitute in the event of an injury. By the end of 1965/66, the English football authorities decided it was impossible for the referee to decide when a player was genuinely injured and so amended the rulebook to allow substitutions to be made for any reason.
Some might say the first ‘supersub’ was David Fairclough, the former Liverpool forward whose autobiography is called just that. Graham Smith, an accomplished youth coach at Everton during the 1980s, wrote a PhD about the greater tactical sophistication brought into English football by European coaches and remembers how in the days of a single permitted substitute, managers would generally opt for “an impact player — usually a forward”. The pacy Fairclough fitted that bill, scoring 18 goals as a Liverpool substitute, most famously the winner against St- Étienne in a European Cup quarter-final fightback at Anfield in 1977.
At the other end of the East Lancs Road, in the red half of Manchester, they will tell you Solskjær is the ultimate ‘supersub’ — and not just for his Champions League-winning strike of 1999. He marked his debut for the club with a goal six minutes after coming off the bench against Blackburn Rovers in 1996. His final United goal, 11 years later, was also against Blackburn — and also six minutes after being sent on by Sir Alex Ferguson. Overall, 29 of his 126 United goals came in games he did not start, including — remarkably — four in the last 18 minutes of a fixture at Nottingham Forest in 1999.
In his second autobiography Sir Alex explains that, as a young player, the Norwegian had lacked physical strength and aggression yet his “analytical mind” meant he could prosper when space appeared late in matches. “In games, sitting on the bench, and in training sessions, he would make notes, always,” he wrote. “So by the time he came on he had analysed who the opponents were, what positions they were assuming. He had those images all worked out. The game was laid out for him like a diagram and he knew where to go and when.”
Today, a quarter of a century on from Solskjær’s prime, the substitute has become all the more important in an age of larger squads and even greater player rotation. In United’s 1999 treble-winning campaign, six players started 30 league matches or more; that figure was three for Manchester City in 2022/23. An even more arresting comparison is with Fairclough’s 1976/77 Liverpool side, for whom seven players began 57 games or more in all competitions; the most for City last term was Rodri with 52.
Data has enabled the modern-day approach according to David Adams, chief football officer of the Football Association of Wales and a UEFA match observer. “The loading of players is well documented, and players pick up on the fact they can’t play three games in ten days consistently over the season,” he says. “With the amount of data collected on each player, you can use this to explain why you’re not starting a player but may have a plan for him to start a midweek game instead.
“A lot of coaches now refer to their team as starters and finishers rather than subs to recognise the importance of how you finish a game as much as how you start a game.” Finishers, eh. It certainly beats the old ‘benchwarmer’ tag, and would sum up a player like Solskjær perfectly.
It is 25 years ago this month since the most dramatic intervention by a substitute in any Champions League final, Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s strike which sealed Manchester United’s extraordinary injury-time turnaround against Bayern München.
The Norwegian is far from the only substitute to have settled a European Cup or Champions League final. Juary was the first for Porto against Bayern in 1987 while Juliano Belletti completed Barcelona’s comeback against Arsenal in 2006 (inspired by a brilliant cameo by fellow substitute Henrik Larsson). A word too for Lars Ricken, the 20-year-old who capped Borussia Dortmund’s 1997 triumph over Juventus by adding their third goal 20 seconds after his introduction.
The reason for this reminiscing is that TV commentators at Wembley on 1 June may well want a list of scoring final substitutes at hand given the growing tendency for players to make an impact off the bench in this era of five permitted changes per team. This season’s Champions League group stage offered a case in point: of the 21 matches with a decisive late goal (scored after the 75-minute mark), 15 came from a substitute. For an example from the knockout stage, meanwhile, look no further than Barcelona’s 3-2 quarter-final win at Paris Saint-Germain where, with their respective first touches after coming on for the visitors, Pedri set up the second goal and Andreas Christensen scored the third.
According to one leading national-team coach, the change to five substitutes, initially introduced during the pandemic, has produced a mentality shift among players who today are much more accepting of a role on the bench. “It has allowed you to have your players more engaged,” he says. “You can tell them, ‘You’re not playing today but you are playing the next one’ or ‘You’ll start this game and finish the next one.’”
We have come a long way from the days when to be ‘subbed off’ was seen as proof a player had not performed and could lead to boots flying – and a few expletives too. Next year will bring the 60th anniversary of the first substitution in English league football when Keith Peacock came on for Charlton Athletic against Bolton Wanderers in a second-tier match on 21 August 1965. Prior to that teams had to battle on with injured players; now they had one substitute in the event of an injury. By the end of 1965/66, the English football authorities decided it was impossible for the referee to decide when a player was genuinely injured and so amended the rulebook to allow substitutions to be made for any reason.
Some might say the first ‘supersub’ was David Fairclough, the former Liverpool forward whose autobiography is called just that. Graham Smith, an accomplished youth coach at Everton during the 1980s, wrote a PhD about the greater tactical sophistication brought into English football by European coaches and remembers how in the days of a single permitted substitute, managers would generally opt for “an impact player — usually a forward”. The pacy Fairclough fitted that bill, scoring 18 goals as a Liverpool substitute, most famously the winner against St- Étienne in a European Cup quarter-final fightback at Anfield in 1977.
