Midfielder
association football position
In association football, a midfielder takes an outfield position primarily in the middle of the pitch. Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role breaking up attacks, and are in that case known as defensive midfielders. As central midfielders often go across boundaries, with mobility and passing ability, they are often referred to as deep-lying midfielders, playmakers, box-to-box midfielders, or holding midfielders. There are also attacking midfielders with limited defensive assignments.
The number of midfielders on a team and their assigned roles depend on which formation is used; the area these players operate in on the pitch is commonly referred to as the midfield. Its name derives from the middle part of the pitch.
Managers frequently assign one or more midfielders to disrupt the opposing team's attacks, while others may be tasked with creating goals, or have equal responsibilities between attack and defence. Midfielders are the players who typically travel the greatest distance during a match. Midfielders arguably have the most possession during a game, and thus, they are some of the fittest players on the pitch. Midfielders are often assigned the task of assisting forwards to create scoring opportunities.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Midfielder” as association football position. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as association football position. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q193592. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Midfielder” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.