The first half of Everton versus Manchester United was a low-on-entertainment slogfest.
The Monday night kick-off was in keeping with many Premier League games this season, with teams finding it harder to create goalscoring chances in open play and focusing more on set-piece opportunities.
Football can often be described as “a game of mistakes”, and this season has seen an increase in games where teams are so focused on avoiding them that they lose sight of how to proactively force one from the opposition.
Thankfully, the second half brought something more entertaining.
In the 70th minute, Benjamin Sesko picked up the ball close to his own penalty area before laying it back to Luke Shaw. Shaw passed to Matheus Cunha, who launched a 40-yard crossfield pass to Bryan Mbeumo on the right wing.
It kick-started one of the more thrilling sights in football: a brilliantly executed counter-attack.
Sesko reached a top speed of 21.94 mph (35.31 km/h) while sprinting to meet Mbeumo’s cutback. He made it clear where he wanted the ball to be played, pointing in the space in front of him with his left arm, and met the pass excellently, scoring with a one-touch finish. It was the sort of goal that gets fans off their feet before it is even scored.
But goals scored on the counter-attack are declining across Europe’s top five leagues compared to five years ago. As more teams look to improve their collective approach to the game when out of possession, there are fewer opportunities for games to be decided via a fast break and a goal on the counter.
Playing space is the oxygen to a counter-attack’s fire. The more space to play a pass, or for a player to run into, the quicker and easier it is to get the ball from A to B to score a goal.
That playing space is being denied in 2025-26, as more sides are looking to defend in compact blocks in the middle of the pitch. But while it’s growing harder to score on the counter-attack, it remains a viable route to goal.
“To create chances against a low block, you need pace, individual special moments to create an overload,” said Liverpool head coach Arne Slot after January’s 0-0 draw against Leeds. “You don’t see a lot of 15-20-pass goals against low blocks. Another way is to create a counter-attack or win the ball high up the pitch when they want to bring the ball out from the back.”
Speed, precision and intrigue make for key ingredients in any counter-attacking goal. Every decision in the lead-up to a possible goal takes on an additional degree of difficulty when working at breakneck pace. If a player chooses the wrong player to pass to or gets the timing wrong, things can fizzle out.
Sesko’s goal against Everton was preceded by a failed counter-attack four minutes earlier, with Cunha taking too long to release the ball to the striker, instead of playing him into space. That Sesko opted to score his goal with a one-touch finish was its own moment. Far too many counter-attacks stall because an attacking player has spooned their shot.
“It looks so easy, but because you have so much time. Many things on your mind,” said Sesko when asked about his finish against Everton. “But I chose for one corner, and I went fully for that.”
Sesko’s strike is one of many brilliant United counter-attacking goals. Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney combined to devastating effect in the late 2000s, scoring memorable fast breaks against Bolton Wanderers in the Premier League and Arsenal in a Champions League semi-final in 2009.
Nor do United have the monopoly on speedy strikes. Across his time in England, Jose Mourinho was known for instructing his players to stick to fixed routes when launching counter-attacks to reduce crossover and muddying goalscoring opportunities. This would maintain maximum efficiency when sprinting.
His Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur sides were noteworthy for their speed in moving the ball from the edge of their own penalty area to the opponents, with both sides possessing an array of ruthless finishers who could punish teams.
Arsene Wenger’s most successful Arsenal sides could launch deadly counter-attacks. A 4-1 win over Leeds United in November 2003 led commentator Clive Tyldesley to say, “Nobody breaks quite like Arsenal” following their second goal of the game, before making reference to the “Arsenal sprint relay squad” in the build-up for their third.
Leicester City’s Premier League triumph of 2015-16 saw Jamie Vardy provide the exclamation mark to more than one slick counter-attacking sentence. A great counter-attacking performance, such as the Netherlands’ 5-1 victory over Spain at the 2014 World Cup or Real Madrid’s 4-0 win over Pep Guardiola’s Bayern Munich in the semi-finals of the Champions League in 2014, can feel like a tactical thesis. Big teams will always look for additional ways to score goals beyond counter-attacking, but they will always be willing to seize presentable opportunities when they arrive.
“When a team plays (with) man-marking, when you break that line you have to attack quickly,” Guardiola said in a recent interview with Sky Sports. “You have to respond to the way they (the opposition) defend. If they play high, you have to attack quicker — if they block lower, you have to be more patient.”
The joy of watching space open up on a football field before attackers swarm into it is hard to beat. It’s the drama of watching very skilled players problem-solve in a split second, with little margin for error. Goals scored on the counter-attack provide memorable moments in otherwise mundane games. Some of the greatest counter-goals come from individuals successfully straddling the line between ultimate risk and ultimate reward.
Troy Deeney scored 140 goals for Watford, but few will be better remembered than his strike against Leicester City in the 2013 Championship play-off semi-finals to send his side to Wembley.
To paraphrase Mike Tyson: “Every football team has a plan until they get hit on the counter-attack”.
There will always be space for counter-attacking goals forged in chaos, even against the most cautious of teams who look to control everything controllable.