All-action Muñoz to Aït-Nouri: 2024-25 may be year of the wing-back revival | Jonathan Liew
Wide defender unleashed as penalty-box poacher has been a subtle trend, but can the system ever work long-term?
“You’re asking for specialists throughout the team,” Gary Neville said recently of the wing-back system. Which presumably came as news to Daniel Muñoz, who before becoming one of the Premier League’s leading wing-backs had never actually played the position before.
Of course Muñoz – a winger in his youth – always had a strong sense of his true calling. In his first season at Nacional in his native Colombia, he scored seven goals from right-back. In his last full season at Genk in Belgium, he scored 11 as Wouter Vrancken’s side came agonisingly close to the league title. “I always liked being where a striker should be on the pitch,” he told Crystal Palace’s website last year. But it was Palace, and more specifically Oliver Glasner, who gave Muñoz full rein in the role he has now made his own.
