Right now, long throws are all the rage in football or, at least back in fashion. There will be those of you who remember a certain Rory Delap in a promoted Stoke City side which terrorised Premier League defences with a long flat throw into the box; sometimes from a distance of 30 metres.
However, in recent seasons, the number of long throws in a game of football have increased steadily. In the 2020/21 campaign, the average for long throws into the penalty stood at 0.89 per match. Meanwhile, the 2024/25 season saw this figure rise to 1.52 per match.
It is widely understood that a long throw is typically 20 metres at the lower threshold, however now, this figure (especially in the Premier League), is in the low 30s.
If we’re looking at the longest throw ever, it was courtesy of Dave Challinor with a distance (and Guinness World Record) of 46.35m in the mid-nineties while playing for Tranmere Rovers. It appears this record still officially stands.
The Reason For The Long Throw Return
It appears that now, more and more coaches are increasingly seeing considerable value by making long throws a key part of their tactics. As such, analysis shows that long throws are providing more chance creation returns and they are no longer a gamble.
Many teams now have long throw ‘specialists’ who are able to launch the ball into their opponents’ penalty area, with routines now designed for such scenarios, like we have previously seen from free-kicks.
A 20 metre long throw for example, is more than long enough to orchestrate a routine such as a near post flick onto someone running onto the ball and meet on the volley for example – in its very basic use.
Meanwhile a throw of 30 metres and beyond could easily be enough to bypass an opponents’ midfield and trigger communication panic between two centre backs and their goalkeeper that have a striker running onto it looking to cause uncertainty, chaos and a genuine goalscoring opportunity.
Will We See A Decline In Long Throws Any Time Soon?
One thing that you can rely on in football is that trends always come back – this is something that we have seen many times. Pep Guardiola wasn’t the first coach to introduce ‘tiki-taka’, though he did adapt a previous version and put his own spin on it.
It is the same with long throws; we have witnessed this in England before; certainly in the lower divisions, while the Premier League in the early nineties, there was a phase, with Delap bringing this back; arguably a masterstroke by then coach Tony Pulis to identify this as an effective tactical ploy.
As such, we are likely to see long throws decline when teams become savvy to defending against them and we’ll then move onto the next trend, which could well be, small, mobile attackers and quick passing. This being because, most clubs will now be using big, slow, tall centre backs to combat the long throw threat, so naturally, the next clever coach will look to exploit this with forwards who are hard to catch and tackle. For now though, it seems that long throws are here to stay and why not?!