Always Turning Forward: The Underrated Offense of N'Golo Kanté
Elite change of pace, ball carrying, and off-ball movement combine to make Kanté one of the best tempo breakers in football today.
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N’Golo Kanté is undeniably one of the greatest ball winners of all time, possessing world-class anticipation, spatial recognition, tenacity, and athleticism. As a result, there has been much debate over the best way to use him out of possession, with his club coaches declining to restrict him to a holding role and the opposite happening with France.
While Kanté’s impact is maximized when allowed to aggressively engage — much like Eduardo Camavinga — his maturity and capacity to modulate his tendencies made him remarkably effective as a screener on the international stage. Thus, due to Kanté’s defensive versatility, the more interesting discussion revolves around how any positional change affects his offense.
Notwithstanding his tactical failures in EURO 2020, Didier Deschamps’ reactive 4-4-2 worked in the World Cup precisely because of the inherent limits present in international competition; with minimal preparation time and less cohesive squad chemistry, it is difficult to build fully-fleshed out systems that test every weakness and dominate every nuance. Consequently, Deschamps could squeeze Kanté into an imperfect fit rather easily, emphasizing N’Golo’s defensive qualities while transferring the progression and creation load to Paul Pogba, knowing that few opponents could exploit such a setup.
In light of this, it’s notable that Kanté has been deployed very differently back in England, where rigorous high pressing and a more dominant team outlook would seriously test the now 31-year-old’s ability to connect play from the back.
Instead, the likes of Maurizio Sarri and Thomas Tuchel have utilized Kanté as a box-to-box dynamo, taking advantage of the skills that make him great on defense to produce a genuine offensive contributor.
Always Turning Forward
The most interesting article touching on Kanté’s attacking style was written by John Muller in April of last year, describing the different “passing vertex angles” of Jorginho and the Paris native.
To put it simply, Jorginho prefers narrow-angle passes much more than normal — in particular, the wall pass — while Kanté would rather turn with the ball before making his move.
With three center backs behind him and Kanté alongside him to provide defensive cover, Jorginho could get back to pinging it around the back, drawing out opposing presses and opening space over the top for Werner to sprint into. On the right side of the double pivot, Kanté can circulate laterally or receive on the half turn to charge upfield — both jobs better suited to his talents than a center mid’s role in the buildup ever was.
Instead of constantly reminding everybody of Chelsea’s rudderless transfer strategy, Jorginho and Kanté finally make sense together. In Tuchel’s midfield they even make each other better, one stretching the press and the other breaking it.
- John Muller from ‘How Passing Vertex Angles Explain Chelsea’
Kanté can struggle with what appears to be basic backwards passes, either lacking accuracy and weighting (or both). There is an art form to quickly returning the ball in narrow angles, requiring precise body shape and excellent touch, and the 5’6” midfielder hasn’t quite mastered it.
What Kanté does possess, however, is a relentless desire to turn and face play whenever possible.
The first and third sequences are notable for how Kanté executes his pass as he pivots, turning and releasing in a singular motion. Receiving on the half-turn is not unique in football, but swiveling AND passing at the same time is not something you see very often, since it affects accuracy and necessitates predetermination. By taking a touch before the pass, a playmaker can adjust their action in case a window shuts down at the last second, although this doesn’t seem to pan out for Kanté in the second clip (he has time to check back inside and find Chelsea’s right back but tries to force it through anyway).
That isolated error illuminates just how forward-thinking Kanté’s mindset is in possession. As soon as the ball enters his vicinity, he wants to turn and go.
And boy can he go.
Ball Carrying & Dribbling
Kanté is straight up one of the most prolific ball carriers in the world when compared to his peers. Versus midfielders, he ranks in the 97th percentile in dribbles completed (at a 70% success rate!), 87th in progressive carries, 91st in progressive carrying distance, 95th in carries into the final third, and 86th in carries into the penalty area [p90 figures from the 21/22 Premier League].
Kanté isn’t a tempo setter — he’s a tempo breaker. At the slightest hint of space, he jets off like a rocket, blitzing through the phases of play and accelerating his side straight into attack mode. Much like Frenkie de Jong, Kanté manufactures transition, scrambling defensive structures and creating favorable situations for attackers running ahead.
His feet are nimble, too, meshing with his agility to empower escape acts from tight situations.
Space Investigation
In more advanced areas, Kanté makes use of the sharp spatial recognition that aids his defensive mastery to knife into gaps (he can do something similar in build-up as well, slipping out of cover shadows to break the press).
His movement is fluid in these scenarios, reacting to whatever the defense gives him. On occasion, he can flow through an entire sequence, breaking the first and second lines before snapping the final cord of resistance by making runs into the channel.
Tactical Fit: Maximizing a Unique Profile
Kanté’s willingness and talent for fomenting chaos are clearly valuable, but holes in other facets of his game lead to a fairly unique profile. Problems with passing refinement make it difficult for him to be a high-usage hub of progression. Additionally, for someone who loves to drift between the lines so much, his utility as a consistent link player is questionable, given his struggles back-to-goal.
Hence, following Lampard’s tenure, Thomas Tuchel had a footballer in Kanté who shined in somewhat particular scenarios. As long as the Frenchman could turn or leverage his off-ball runs, he could be a game-changer. Logically, this meant that Kanté’s ideal role was as an interior or the advanced member of a double pivot, but only if he didn’t have to conduct play or act as connective tissue via narrow-angled passes.
This introduced a little bit of a conundrum, as the Parisian’s preferred positions in a three-man or two-man midfield traditionally require execution of at least one of those duties. In response, Tuchel crafted very specific dynamics on the right-hand side to enhance Kanté’s strengths and hide his weaknesses.1
Automatisms, Wide Interchanges, & Third-Man Runs
The main order of business was to simplify Kanté’s passing routine when he dropped to the ball. Ahead of a back three and with a wing-back arriving to create a close network on the wing, Kanté can do what he loves — passing and turning in one motion — to make a simple and relatively risk-free completion to the touchline.
Notice how Kanté is facing forward and primed to explode in north-south fashion immediately after the ball leaves his foot. This sets up the potential for a number of dynamic combinations out wide, especially if the inside forward comes to support, which would drag a marker out and open up space in behind.
Chelsea love unleashing Kanté in third-man actions, reflecting a very focused method of getting the best out of his off-ball movement. At times, Kanté won’t even touch the ball in the initial phase, being used solely as a line-breaker while others circulate quickly in triangles.
Real Madrid were particularly devastated by this last season and N’Golo could do similar damage in the rematch on Wednesday.
Another variation sees Kanté drift over to the wing to receive, allowing him to reorient his body to the opposition goal, where he can use his quick feet to maneuver out of cramped zones and initiate high-tempo one-two’s.
The composition of Tuchel’s right-sided structures and the various ways it manifests can bring Chelsea to the final third in breathtaking ways. Once there, Kanté can shift to a more freelance style; working the channels, attacking the box occasionally, and floating in the odd cross.
Those characteristics allow him to continue offering value even after the opposition resets in a deep block, but it is in such contexts where Kanté has to start thinking about stopping the counter-attack, bringing him full circle back to his ball winning.
Perhaps it is that cyclical nature of offense and defense that best defines what N’Golo Kanté has to offer — not just in how his duties shift back and forth from third to third but in the fundamental attributes that drive his overall brilliance.
His fluid, explosive athleticism allows him to track down dribblers and make recovery tackles, just as it allows him to burst into space with or without the ball.
His acuity in identifying weak points within structures enhances his ball winning by bringing interceptions and territory denial into the equation, just as it enhances his runs by directing them into dangerous locations.
And it is his engine, high-revving motor, and selfless team ethic that enables him to do all of those things for ninety minutes — always on the move, always searching, and always turning forward.
Kanté is hardly the only one to have been accommodated like this. Tuchel did the same for Jorginho, Thiago Silva, and arguably Rüdiger. Finding ways to maximize good but flawed players is a hallmark of elite coaching.