Welcome, everyone to soccer 101. My name is Taylor Rockwell, here back with me.

To make sense of the topics that maybe need a little bit more information is Mr. Graham Ruffin. Hello, Graham. Hello, Taylor Rockwell. How are you? Good, man. It's been a long time. Not since we talked. We talked about 30 seconds ago when we recorded a Patreon episode. And about 15 minutes before that, we recorded a full episode. It's our third one of the day,

but our first soccer 101 since the start of the World Cup. And a little bit even before that,

Graham, I've missed our time together, my friend. So, bye, I enjoy these episodes. And this one is

a good one. And maybe embodies or epitomizes why we do these episodes where it's a, we're

going to talk about a term today that we use quite a lot on the show and maybe use it quite

flippantly without maybe explaining what it actually means. So that's what we're going to do today.

Indeed. And along the way, another aspect of these shows that I enjoy, I learn that I've been misusing

another phrase. So that's one that I will try to work on. But today we're talking about half spaces,

what they are, why they're important, which players tend to utilize them the best, and maybe

which managers tend to utilize them the best. So Graham, let's start with the basics. What are

half spaces? Why do we talk about them so often,

especially so often these days? Yeah. So as I say, this is a term that we use quite a lot on the show.

It's a term that you will find in quite a lot of football writing at the moment. And it is certainly

something that has become more common in the last five years or so. It's not that the concept is

something new. It's just that it feels like soccer parlance is growing all the time. And it's a term

that helps us describe something that is that is rather important in the modern game. So I think

often you will find with tactical writers and bloggers and podcasters they will separate

the pitch into different areas so imagine you're looking at a soccer pitch from above from

you're looking down straight down on a soccer pitch and you can divide it up into five lanes so the

the widest part are the the wide areas or the wings if you want to be traditional about it.

Then the bit in the middle is the vertical space and that is usually defined as the

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