London: Antonio Conte, the Chelsea manager, describes it as “quantity”. The way in which certain midfielders impose themselves on a game, almost without anyone noticing. A tackle here. An interception there. A quick springboard pass, perhaps even the odd surreptitious foul. Another way of describing it might be “omnipresence”.

Eric Cantona, of course, had a less complimentary way of putting it. “Didier Deschamps,” he once famously said, “ne sera jamais qu’un porteur d’eau.” Deschamps will never be anything but a water-carrier. “You can find players like him on every street corner,” he added with a scoff.

In a strange sort of way, Cantona was right, but not in the way he intended. Look through the Premier League, and the water-carriers are everywhere. But nobody is scoffing at them any more. In the two decades since Deschamps graced the Premier League with Chelsea, the role of the defensive midfielder — the holder, the anchor, whatever you want to call it — has subtly shifted.

The development of the two-bank midfield in the early 2000s meant players such as Claude Makelele thrived on snuffing out attacks before quickly laying the ball off to more technical colleagues. In recent years, however, more and more teams have employed a high-tempo front-pressing game — not a new idea in itself, of course, but new perhaps in its extent and ubiquity. Even the humble shin artist must now be skilled enough on the ball to evade a pursuer and pick a pass. And this is where the new generation of screening midfielders — Water-Carrier 2.0, if you like — comes in.

Claude Puel, the Southampton manager and once a defensive midfielder himself with Monaco, recently noted the change. “I was a different generation,” he said. “I played in front of the defence and had a good recovery of the ball. 
But it’s important in modern football to have a player in this position who is very technical. A good ability to work the ball and switch it wide, while anticipating the situation.”

The player Puel was referring to was Oriol Romeu, who has quietly become one of the Premier League’s most improved players this season after drifting into irrelevance under Ronald Koeman. Romeu has already made more tackles and interceptions than in the whole of last season, adding steel to a game honed at Barcelona’s academy under the tutelage of Pep Guardiola.

Meanwhile, the player Romeu replaced at Southampton, Victor Wanyama, has developed into one of the most important cogs in Mauricio Pochettino’s Tottenham side. Wanyama is actually making fewer tackles than he did at Southampton, which is hardly surprising for a team who enjoy more ball possession. What he has added, however, is forward thrust: only four players have made more passes this season, and only four Spurs players have had more shots on goal.

Koeman, for his part, has been busy nurturing Idrissa Gueye at Everton: statistically the most effective holding midfielder in any of Europe’s major leagues in 2016, with an average of more than eight tackles or interceptions per game.

Of course, no discussion of defensive midfielders would be complete without mentioning perhaps the pick of the lot: one of the leading contenders to be Footballer of the Year, and potentially only the second man to win back-to-back Premier League titles with different clubs. As the internet joke goes: seventy per cent of the planet is covered by water, the rest is covered by N’Golo Kante.

Conte freely admits that he had never heard of Kante two years ago. And when the diminutive midfielder arrived at Leicester City in 2015, he was innocently asked by a car park attendant whether he was waiting for his mum and dad to collect him. But in a remarkably short space of time, Kante has become perhaps one of the all-time great Premier League central midfielders. His 14 tackles against Liverpool last week were the most by any player in a single game for more than two years. Kante is often compared to Makelele, but in truth he is a more dynamic and creative sort of player.

Typically, Conte often reserves his harshest criticism for his most treasured pupils, and he believes that Kante can offer Chelsea more going forward. “He should improve in his build-up play,” he said. “His first pass is always horizontal, and he needs to make that vertical. I think he’s a complete midfielder, not only a defensive midfielder.”

One thing all four of these midfielders have in common is that none of them is English. Perhaps the closest is the luckless Owen Hargreaves, who — by no coincidence at all — learnt his football abroad.

— The Telegraph Group Ltd, London 2017