The newest iteration of the trequartista is not the fantasista of old.

Last season, when Kevin-Prince Boateng’s performances as an unorthodox #10 were garnering attention, it was sometimes called le plongeur. Yaya Toure at Manchester City has been playing this role for a couple of seasons now.

Rather than being known for their passing ability (though many who play this role are fine and usually underrated passers), they are used for their energy and drive.

The rise of this new trequartista is a direct response to another role which has had a rebirth: the regista.

The deep lying playmakers who sit in front of their own defense, but who don’t always specialize in tackles, they specialize in launching attacks. Through a combination of accurate long and medium passing (Pirlo being a perfect example) or an ability to quickly recycle possession (Busquets does this very well). And no team can rise to the heights, especially in the Champion’s League, without one anymore.

Manchester United has the controversial Michael Carrick; Manchester City has Gareth Barry and added Jack Rodwell and Javi Garcia; Real Madrid’s moves flow through Xabi Alonso; and Juventus lives by the ageless vision of Andrea Pirlo.

Thiago Motta, a traditional, hard tackling defensive midfielder by trade, was played by Italy as a #10 in the final of the Euros not because anyone thought him capable of subtly unlocking Spain’s defenses, but so that his hustle and defensive nous could deny time and space to Spain’s deep lying midfielders (of course, Spain, in that tournament, had three players able to play some version of that role – Xavi, Xabi Alonso, and Sergio Busquets – and Motta also got himself injured, so it didn’t work out so well).

Everton coach David Moyes moved his big, Belgian tackler, Marouane Fellaini behind the striker not only for his goal scoring prowess, but for real defensive, more than ever, starts at the front. His size and aggression puts pressure on opposing defenders and deep lying midfielders, thereby providing real defensive cover for his team, even when playing just outside the other team’s eighteen yard box. Everton has an attacking midfielder on their roster and on the field in Leon Osman, but Moyes knows that Osman can’t provide the same kind of disruptive role, so plays his traditional attacking midfielder behind behind a classic holding midfielder.

With the rise of Aston Villa’s Belgian target man, Christian Benetke, Belgium’s array of playmakers and wide forwards (Hazard, Mirallas), dominating box to box midfielders with wide passing ranges (Fellaini, Witsel, Defour, Dembele), powerful defenders (Vertonghen, Kompany, Vermaelen) now have a focal point for their attack.

Pick ’em now for the semi finals of the 2014 World Cup.

For the last few years my favorite EPL team has been Tottenham Hotspur (I loved their fearless attack under Redknapp, playing with two traditional, British wingers in Bale and Lennon).

Bale is out for a couple of weeks and I’m hoping to see Clint Dempsey (the new Captain America) moved out of “the hole,” where he hasn’t looked 100% effective for club nor country,mto Bale’s wide left.

Dempsey would tend to cut inside and attack the goal. With Defoe too short to attack crosses, Dempsey could provide an aerial threat and could also interchange with Sigurdsson (who would presumably come in as attacking midfielder) and create space for Defoe to use his acceleration and movement to find the little openings.

Also, Spurs don’t need to spend huge sums on a tempo setting player like Moutinho. He will cost too much, when that money could be better spent on needs like a long term replacement for Gallas and another striker.

What people keep on forgetting is that Scott Parker is expected back in the new year.

He’s no Moutinho, but his defensive nous and careful, accurate (though unadventurous) passing will provide a incredible platform for other midfielders to surge forward. He’s not a long term solution at thirty-two years old, but he’s got another season in his legs, long enough for Livermore and Carroll to grow into first teamers.

I’m watching a replay of the Bayern-Lille Champion’s League game. And with a central midfield of Javi Martinez, Bastian Schweinsteiger, and Toni Kroos, Bayern has the sort of possession based, tempo setting lineup that could (maybe?) think about going toe to toe with Barcelona. Especially when you toss in Lahm, who right now is a better fullback than Alves, and Ribery who likes Iniesta right now, except he plays wide rather than centrally and has a burst of pace that Iniesta lacks.

Should note that Javi hasn’t really grown into the team yet. At Bilbao he was a combination of Franz Beckenbauer and Andrea Pirlo. But the generalissimo role he played there belongs to Schweinsteiger at Bayern. The logical solution is to let the German player push a little higher while Javi plays the regista but that shift will take time.

Hyperbole? Probably. There’s a freaking hurricane! I’m bored.

Roberto Mancini was let go by the management at Inter Milan for his failure to do enough in the Champion’s League. He was a near sure thing to lead the side to domestic titles, with AC Milan on a downward stretch (which is now threatening to become less merely downward and more downright plummetous) and Juventus taken down by dubious match-fixing scandals, but never seemed to really threaten the big guys to reach the next level.

But he was a good bet for the oil-rich sheikhs to take on at Manchester City. He knew how to handle expensively assembled teams and could achieve that critical first step of domestic dominance. He was also a good bet to flounder when it came to big matches in European competition.

Mancini doesn’t know how to take it to the next level. And when he tries, the results are often tragicomic.

For a stretch at Inter Milan, he knew that the talented and egotistical striker, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, could get them the points, week in and week out in those workaday games the team needed to win to stay top of the league. But come those midweek games in the Champion’s League, when every game is against the best teams each league has to offer, where every team has the players and tactical nous to isolate Ibrahimovic, he stumbled regularly.

And it’s happening again.

When Jose Mourinho took over Inter Milan, he got rid of the big striker in favor of harder working, team players who, while less outrageously skillful, would also buy into a tactical scheme designed to build create multiple danger points so that opposing teams would struggle to close down them all.

Mancini has done some important things. Reinventing Yaya Toure as a new kind of no. 10, surging from deep as what some commentators have taken to calling a ‘plongeur’ (plunger), using physical force to drive through and create space. Toure also uses his underrated passing skills, but he’s certainly no artiste de pass like your classical trequartista (Totti, Zidane, Sneijder).

But mainly, he has depended on a handful of super talented players to bail the team out. When the player he’s depending on has a bad game or worse, a bad patch, he is at a loss for ideas.

Actually, that’s not true. He has ideas. Just bad ones. The only good idea he ever has is to toss Edin Dzeko onto the field and hope the talented striker bails him out. Mancini has famously been experimenting with a 3-5-2 formation. While he theoretically has the players for it, the players never looked prepped for it, with the result that the team looks scared and uncertain.

He knows he needs to take the team to the next level, where they can go toe to toe with the best teams in the world with something approaching regularity. He’s not doing that and he’s taken the approach of throwing things at the wall and hoping something sticks. They’re not sticking.