Monterrey's split defensive wall: cool, clever, but not as new as you may think
Twenty six minutes into what was, in truth, a fairly forgettable match between River Plate and Monterrey, the Argentine side were awarded a free-kick just outside the area.
As Franco Mastantuono prepared to take it, Monterrey goalkeeper Esteban Andrada barked instructions at his team-mates. Four of them grouped together, positioning themselves to cover the near side of the goal. A couple of metres away, another Monterrey player formed his own barrier, in line with the far post.
A similar scene played out shortly after half-time. The free-kick was wider this time; the main wall was only two strong. Again, though, there was a gap and another Monterrey player on other other side of it:
Normally, these small moments probably wouldn't have captured the attention. For the last few days, though, the internet has been gripped with Monterrey wall fever, the kind of mass hysteria that can really only take hold during the long, delirious days of summer tournaments.
People (OK, I) watched the River match hoping for a repeat of what Monterrey conjured in their opening Group E game against Inter. In that game, the Mexican side conceded a free-kick a metre outside the penalty box. It could not have been more central.
Normally, a goalkeeper sets up his wall to protect one side of the goal and stands in the other. Andrada, though, did something a little different. He set up two walls, four men on either side, and he stood in the middle:
You could understand the logic. Due to the location of the kick, there was no near post and no far post. Choosing a side for the wall would have been arbitrary. It would also have restricted Andrada's view: a risk whenever you set up a wall but doubly so when the free-kick is so close to goal. By splitting his wall he was making it harder for Inter's Kristjan Asllani to place the ball in either corner — and putting himself in a position to react should Asllani manage that feat.
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So there you have it: the free-kick that launched a thousand social media posts.
Two things are worth pointing out here. The first is that the split wall did work, but only because of some individual initiative. Asllani opted not to try and clip the ball over either mini wall. Instead, he tried to blast the ball down the middle. He might have succeeded, too, had centre-back John Medina not leaned into the gap and stuck out a leg. Even the cleverest plans leave room for a little improvisation.
The second is that, contrary to much of the online discourse, this wasn't a new thing.
For a start, Monterrey have used the split wall on a couple of other occasions in the past three years. The first came in July 2022, in the Mexican league match against Santos Laguna. The free-kick was a little further out than Asllani's, slightly to the left of centre. Instead of asking for a five or six-man wall, goalkeeper Luis Cardenas put four team-mates to the kicker's left and two to the right, with a gap in between:
It left Cardenas with a perfect view of the ball and allowed him to make a good reflex save.
They did it again January 2024. Coincidentally, Monterrey's opponents were River; the two teams were playing a pre-season friendly match in Dallas. Cardenas was again the goalkeeper and once more split his wall up into a group of four and a group of two. Here you can really see how the ploy allowed him to take up a position right in the centre of the goal, rather than being confined to one side:
A home-brewed Monterrey confection, then? Not quite. The story of the split wall actually goes back at least as far as 1993, when the US men's national team experimented with the technique under Serbian coach Bora Milutinovic.
'How you form your wall is very important,' Milutinovic told The Athletic in 2021. 'When I opened the wall a little bit, it was to give the goalkeeper the chance to see the ball immediately. When you see the free kick being taken, you get a nine-metre head start.'
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Ironically, the split wall — rare, puzzling at first glance, undeniably goofy — was actually a concession to common sense. Milutinovic had initially favoured something even more extreme. 'For me, it's better not to have a wall at all,' he said.
That plan didn't get very far. Nor, in truth, did the split wall. 'It was a good idea in practice,' former US goalkeeper Tony Meola told The New York Times in 2012. 'But once we put another team out there, it all fell apart. We went back to the old way.'
That, really, is the issue. Leaving a space is all well and good. If the opposition players have anything about them, though, they will fill it themselves, use it to create chaos.
Look again at Andrada's split wall in the Inter game. Three savvy Inter players have positioned themselves between the two units. The advantage has disappeared. You only benefit from leaving a gap if there actually is one.
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