Until recently, teams who wanted to press aggressively usually set up with a +1 at the back and left a free man on the far side. The best teams became quite comfortable at finding the free man through various patterns. Now, even teams who don’t necessarily have the best 1v1 defenders are happy to go man-to-man; thus, there is no free man, except the goalkeeper. Pressing is simply a matter of distances. Despite the goalkeeper being the free man, the distances between him and his center-backs in a traditional 1-4-2-4/1-4-3-3 buildup are too small; this enables an opposition player to play a double role where he jumps from one center-back onto the goalkeeper while keeping the center-back in his cover shadow. This results in the free man being just on paper and practically inaccessible. The solution is to increase the distances between the “free man” (goalkeeper) and his teammates. Use the keeper as an auxiliary CB in a 4-2-5 or other variations. This has been applied sparsely by coaches, but it has not been consistently executed to the extent required, and even when the 4-2-5 has been used, the distances are inefficient, with one of the center-backs usually not being as wide as a traditional full-back should be, or the team ends up building with only 3, with both center-backs splitting and the 4th player, usually a full-back, ending up too high.