Have other sports influenced Arsenal’s rise? Rebounds, rotations and a pendulum defence

Arsenal’s progress in recent years has been remarkable. Year-on-year under Mikel Arteta, they have bettered their points tally each time. There are lots of reasons for that, from the importance of belief to new signings elevating the team.

One factor worth noticing is the influence other sports have had on Arsenal.

Some of those influences are more apparent than others, but there is no doubt the club have taken inspiration from outside football, whether from basketball and rugby, or more niche sports such as handball.

Here, The Athletic examines exactly how some of those sports have influenced Arsenal.

Basketball

We’ll start with the most popular, and obvious, example.

The comparisons between Arsenal’s play and basketball started 18 months ago. Curiosity sparked when Martin Odegaard was part of two basketball-inspired celebrations in a matter of weeks in matches away to Brighton & Hove Albion and Tottenham Hotspur.

Although the Arsenal captain could be vague when asked about it, he later told Overtime FC’s TikTok: “It’s just a principle we have in the team called the Basketball Rule and it’s (about) being in front of the man.”

This was to explain his goal at Brighton, when he reached a loose ball before Kauro Mitoma on the edge of the box to finish. Earlier that month, when asked about the amount of quick turnovers Arsenal were forcing during their mid-season friendlies, Reiss Nelson said: “We call it the Basketball Rule. In basketball, there’s a lot of rebounds, so that’s something the boss has incorporated into our style.”

Arsenal ranked second in the Premier League last season for winning possession in the final third (253 times). Pressuring the ball appears to be a key part of this basketball rule. In basketball, man-to-man defending emphasises the defender keeping the ball in front of him and not letting a dribbler get past. The best defenders in the sport take it a step further and apply pressure on the ball-handler, looking to force a mistake.

Looking back over recent months, here are a few examples where Arsenal players have done well in that respect to force a turnover and set up a counter-attack, against Chelsea, Luton Town and Everton.

Man-marking is not new to football, but the instruction of being in front of (or in line with) the opponent in possession does seem important. Declan Rice is a master at anticipating passes anyway, but being well-positioned no doubt helped Emile Smith Rowe and Gabriel Jesus produce moments they tend to be less associated with.

Those moments lead to what is the most obvious comparison made between football and basketball: transitions.

Funnily enough, this was something interim manager Freddie Ljungberg and Arteta were vocal about wanting to stop happening to Arsenal in the aftermath of Unai Emery’s November 2019 sacking. Now, Arsenal are utilising these transitions to become more dominant, although the best examples came in the 2022-23 season.

In the 1980s, Magic Johnson, the legendary Los Angeles Lakers star, popularised what in basketball circles is known as a fast break. The idea is to get the ball — via turnover or rebound — and race to the offensive end of the court before the defence can get set. They called it ‘Showtime’ when the Lakers did it, because it was an exciting style of play. Now, it’s a staple of NBA basketball. The Golden State Warriors, led by Stephen Curry, became an NBA dynasty with five titles in eight years by thriving in transition.

We see the same traits in Arsenal when they pounce on the ball, force turnovers and immediately apply pressure on the opposing defence, finding opportunities to break quickly.

One of Arsenal’s key attributes in 2022-23 was five players racing into the final third whenever they attacked. It would become six when Ben White overlapped, but even with five they often took up the width of the pitch before exploiting space more centrally.

Below are two examples. One against Manchester City, where Bukayo Saka joins the move late to finish. The other is against Liverpool, where Saka is the wide outlet and Gabriel Martinelli waits to burst into a more central space to score.

Similarities with basketball can also be seen in how Arsenal use blockers — Alexandre Lacazette obstructs Nathan Ake to create space for a Saka goal against Manchester City in 2022 (above). Blocking is more often seen in Arsenal’s set-piece routines.

Cross-sport similarities have also been seen in how Arsenal move the ball, specifically out wide.

Arsenal fans will be familiar with White waiting for Saka to make a run inside a full-back before passing into that space for him to receive, as seen below.

Arteta himself spoke about wanting this movement from his wingers when working towards earning his coaching qualifications, saying: “I don’t like creating (straight) lines between the wide players. Why? Because the full-back passes to the wide player like this with his back to goal. He can’t progress the play. There’s always someone at his bum so he cannot play forward.

“When you do it like this (with the winger coming inside off the line), the angles you create mean you are always receiving the ball like this (on the move).”

These types of passes have drawn comparison to the off-ball ‘cutting’ or ‘slashing’ movements in basketball, where players dart across a defender to receive a pass in space. They have been vital to White and Saka’s relationship on the right and helped Arsenal become more threatening over the past two seasons.

Rugby

It could be argued rugby has had just as big an impact on Arsenal, although that is not always on the pitch.

Like most clubs, Arsenal will often have coaches or analysts up in the stands during matches. In rugby, that tends to also be where head coaches watch play from, as opposed to being down on the touchline, like in football. Being elevated in the stand provides a different vantage point from which to spot what is going right or wrong during a game.

Arsenal use this in first-team and under-21 matches. When Arteta was first appointed, Ljungberg took this role in the stands, with a direct line of communication to the bench.

Asked about watching games from that viewpoint during last year’s rugby union World Cup, Arteta said: “I spoke to Sam (Allardyce, former Bolton Wanderers, West Ham United and England manager) about it and he was really comfortable to have the first period (of a match) there. When he explained the arguments of why he did it, it’s just brilliant. That’s being ahead of the game and managing yourself in a way that can make the team better.”

Last autumn, rugby had a more obvious influence on Arsenal players. When there was an international break at the same time as that sport’s World Cup, Rice, currently on international duty at Euro 2024, spoke about how he and his England team-mates have sought to improve their mental approach in matches that could go either way.

“We’ve had some people in before to do some talks,” the Arsenal midfielder said. “Not only the (New Zealand) All Blacks; England as well (and) South Africa. How to get over the line. How to do things differently and how to have that mindset of, ‘We ain’t getting beaten. No matter what’.”

It will be impossible to tell whether that mindset has carried over to his game at Arsenal, but it is likely. Arsenal’s improved performances against the rest of the top six, who they went unbeaten against in 2023-24, is a testament to that, considering new signing Rice was key throughout.

One influence from rugby that may be more visible on the pitch is in Arsenal’s defensive structure.

Over the past few seasons, their press has aimed to guide opposition teams into a trap near the touchline. Over time, their execution has become more intense, with White often one of the side’s most advanced players on the pitch, to help condense space as seen below.

That swing, with White pushing so high up and everybody else covering, is reminiscent of a shape drill done as early as under-12s in rugby.

The drill is focussed on a ‘Pendulum Defence’, where the back three in a rugby team (the two wingers and a full-back) will swing across the pitch depending on where the ball is. Usually, two wingers hold the width with the full-back central, but during this drill the ball-side winger would push up, the full-back would push out to the touchline and the far-side winger would come central.

It is a principle that is worked on in football, when far-side wingers pick up loose players infield, but the extreme nature of Arsenal’s setup felt more comparable to how the pendulum defence is actually executed in rugby.

The influence has also gone the other way.

In 2022, then England rugby union head coach Eddie Jones spoke of Arteta’s trip to their camp the previous year. Asked what he learned, Jones said: “A fast start — how fast they get out of the blocks. Every game, they’re at it. They play with energy, they know how they want to play, they put the opposition on the back foot.”

Fast starts were a theme of Arsenal’s play at the time. They were lacking at the beginning of last season, but returned in 2024. That relentlessness kept their title charge going until the campaign’s final round of matches.

Handball

As with any coach, understanding their background is key to understanding how they set their teams up.

“It comes a lot from the culture and what you have grown up with,” Arsenal Women head coach Jonas Eidevall said last year. “Basketball is not big in Sweden, but handball is. Maybe I’ll speak to Mikel, as I actually think handball may be an even better-suited sport than basketball.

“I grew up playing a lot of handball, so I take a lot of inspiration from that sport when I think about principles and transition moments in football. When you’re attacking, you set up your positions and you can’t really challenge the ball in those moments. So you work with many different rotations and patterns, constantly working with a balance behind when you take shots in order to defend a counter-attack.”

Some direct correlations can be made between football and handball in this regard. Eidevall’s focus on positioning ‘behind the ball’ when playing forward, so that midfielders are in a good position to counter-press if possession is lost, is one.

Another that is slightly less obvious may be rotations that are worked on to break down stubborn defences inside the final third.

In handball, it is possible to make a shot as predictable as possible by having a set defensive shape. That is an issue both Arsenal’s men and women have faced in recent seasons but, particularly for the men, rotational relationships have been key to unlocking those low blocks.

That has been seen at its best between the trio of Saka, Odegaard and White.

While Eidevall joked about suggesting handball to Arteta, it is not too far-fetched to imagine he already has an understanding of the sport. Handball is much bigger in continental Europe than in England, and Barcelona, where Arteta started his playing career, have a handball team, as well as a basketball one.

Barcelona’s handball team playing Paris Saint-Germain in May (Josep Lago/AFP/Getty Images)

Ice hockey

Scandinavia has a love for ice hockey which has factored into Eidevall’s coaching too.

“You have some principles from a positional perspective (that are similar),” he said. “Their center (the equivalent of a striker in football) is always in front of the goalkeeper. They don’t have offside, so they try to be in the line of sight all the time.

“When you look at that positional detail for centre forwards in football for hold-up play, you use the concept of being in a tough spot for the defender to see both things. In ice hockey, you don’t want them to see the puck. Here, you don’t want them to see the ball and you at the same time, but you still want to be as central as possible.”

The strikers at Eidevall’s disposal are fairly different. Stina Blackstenius tends to stretch defences with runs in behind, while Alessia Russo is the one to link play more often. Either way, that ability to hold the ball up is key, and was increasingly apparent for the men’s team last season after Kai Havertz started to play at centre-forward.

Again, this is not a reinvention of the wheel. Taller strikers have been targets for team-mates in football for decades, but others may be exposed to similar themes in a different way to those who only grew up with football.

Despite football being such a free-flowing sport, there are times when having set ideas on how to hurt teams helps. Many of those will come from coaches’ years of experience within football itself, but there is also room to adopt transferable concepts from other sports and apply them to your own.

Arsenal have benefited from Arteta and Eidevall being open-minded enough to understand that. With Arteta, alongside the influences spoken about in this piece, he has also spoken to NFL and NBA head coaches, as part of groups akin to the one mentioned by rugby counterpart Jones.

As the margins for success tighten with each year that passes, finding different ways to have a competitive edge matters.

One of the most blatant ways Arsenal have done so in recent years is how they use set pieces. But there will be many more difference-makers that may not be immediately recognisable on a matchday, such as how different aspects of their play are influenced.

GO DEEPER

Arsenal’s 2024-25 Premier League fixtures

(Top photo: Richard Heathcote via Getty Images)