Inside the super-sub role, and why Durán is the ultimate game changer

Jhon Durán was angry. In October, a minute after he grabbed Aston Villa’s second goal against Bologna in the Champions League with a smart first-time finish, he was walking toward the bench having been substituted. The TV cameras caught him kicking the chair in front of him, throwing all manner of things around as the frustration at being substituted boiled over.

Durán is one of the most lethal strikers in Europe, with 10 goals in 23 games. Five of those goals have come in the Premier League, but his only four starts this year for Villa have come against Wycombe Wanderers and Crystal Palace in the EFL Cup, Southampton in the Premier League, and Bologna in the Champions League.

On Tuesday, he did it again against RB Leipzig, coming off the bench in the second half to score a sublime long-range goal and help Villa win 3-2.

Just five days before his Bologna tantrum, Durán was again visibly exasperated. This time he’d begun the game on the bench. Villa were 3-1 up away at Fulham when he was given the nod after 75 minutes for Ollie Watkins. For the next 20 or so minutes, Durán hovered on the shoulders of Fulham’s high line hoping to break away for a chance, but the ball seldom came to him. Durán wanted the coup de grâce, but his teammates favoured consolidation; time after time he threw his arms up frustrated as the ball was knocked around the midfield, and not toward him.

6 – Jhon Durán has scored six goals after coming on as a substitute in all competitions for Aston Villa this season – the most by any player for clubs in Europe’s big-five leagues in 2024-25. Super. pic.twitter.com/hPseCcju8A

— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) December 10, 2024

Durán is not the first — nor will he be the last — to be cast in this unwanted “super-sub” role: Jermain Defoe (Tottenham and England), Ole Gunnar Solskjaer (Manchester United) and Olivier Giroud (Arsenal) have all held it. But it’s a shifting moniker. With teams allowed to make five substitutions in the Premier League, the bench has more scope than ever to shift the momentum of a match.

Managers are changing the lexicon around replacements, calling them “finishers.” That’s not to say strikers will ever embrace that role.

Welcome to the world of the super-sub — a player who makes a match-shifting impact from the bench, knowing he has a small window to make an impression to force the manager’s hand for a start. Super-subs are players who believe they have the ability to start, are frustrated to be on the bench, and are restricted to a cameo role to prove their talents. Even if they score, they might be back on the bench the following match.

“You want to start,” former Premier League striker Adam Le Fondre tells ESPN. “I think it comes down to it when you start playing football as a kid you don’t go, ‘Oh dad, I want to be on the bench today.’ You want to start, you want to score goals, you want to win.”

Strikers making an impact from the bench is hardly a novelty. Ex-Liverpool striker David Fairclough even dedicated a book to it — “Supersub” — having played the support role from 1975 to 1983. Fairclough made 154 appearances for Liverpool and scored 55 goals (62 were appearances from the bench, as were 18 of his goals). On 76 occasions he sat on the bench and remained there.

“In the old days, it was all about the XI,” Fairclough said in 2017. “Clubs were lucky if they had a substitute who could make a difference. These days, people talk about success and say it’s about the squad, not about the XI.”

Though he became synonymous with the role, it’s not to say he grew to love it.

“It did not help my career that I came off the bench and scored so often, and from 1977 onwards I made it clear I wanted to leave irrespective of the success Liverpool were enjoying at the time,” Fairclough said in 2001.

Le Fondre can sympathise, as can others who have worn that unwanted moniker. “Everyone who watches football, you see the players starting going, you know what?” Le Fondre says. “I want to be that guy who plays 90 minutes, scores four goals, walks off, he’s the hero. You want adulation; you want love as a footballer.”

Le Fondre knows Durán’s threats as well. “I played against Durán last season with Hibernian in the Conference League and he was fantastic that night and I know he’s going to have a phenomenal career,” he says.

“It’s hard when a young player comes on, scores a few goals, he starts to make a name for himself, but I think Durán’s work has been eased by the work Watkins has done beforehand. Now it’s on Durán to beat Watkins for that position, but Watkins is a fantastic player.”

Le Fondre can also relate to Durán’s current situation. Le Fondre holds the record for the most goals off the bench in a single Premier League season, scoring eight to help Reading survive the drop in 2012-13. “I always knew I’d score goals no matter if I started or was on the bench. But I had to accept the objective of the team was to stay in the Premier League. It wasn’t to give me starting minutes and hope I’m happy.”

In the Premier League, Defoe has scored the most goals off the bench (24), closely followed by Giroud (21) and Javier Hernandez (19). Defoe hated being pigeonholed as an impact player.

“I don’t want to have the title of super-sub,” he said in 2009. Solskjaer was also frequently handed that title, leading to Sir Alex Ferguson calling him “the substitute from hell” in 2000.

“Sir Alex knew that if he put me on the bench then I’d be angry, but also fired up and ready to give everything when I came on,” Solskjaer said earlier this year. “Not every sub does that. A lot of subs are sulky and hopeless on the bench. I went on with the aim of proving the manager wrong.”

Regardless of title, players have to adapt. “I think for me I was always in the mindset that I’m always ready to play no matter what,” Le Fondre says.

“So if I knew I was on the bench, I’m still ready to play. I’m watching the game, I’m studying, the visualization stuff beforehand that I would do anyway if I was starting. If I’d seen a missed chance — I’m sure any other player would be the same — I’d say to myself, ‘Yeah I’d have taken that.'”

The key to ensuring a team gets the most from its bench is man management, according to leadership and mindset expert Steve Sallis. Sallis has worked with UEFA, England’s Football Association, the Scottish Football Association and various individual players on mindset and sees a binding thread: effective communication.

“Look at internal and external factors: internal being the player and external being the culture and your relationship with your manager,” Sallis tells ESPN. “Some managers drop you well and communicate with you about it, while some managers are still living in 1965 and chuck the team on the wall and they expect you to deal with it.”

He admires Jurgen Klopp, remembering how Klopp would hug the Liverpool players who’d only got 15 or so minutes at the end of the match, ensuring they felt a key part of any performance. “The key to success is the strength and happiness of your weakest link in a team,” Sallis adds.

“The top managers have emotional intelligence, and not only do they speak five languages, they have seriously agile brains, so they can engage with each player.”

Sallis says another shifting aspect of the existence of the modern-day substitute is the relentless fixture calendar and how managers can use five subs in the Premier League — a rule change which was introduced temporarily during the COVID-19 pandemic to help manage player fatigue. Several Premier League clubs opposed it becoming permanent as they thought it would favour the bigger teams, but it was ratified ahead of the 2022-23 season.

“If we look at the psychology of motivation years ago, players weren’t even sure if they were going to get on,” Sallis says. “You pretty much know you’re going to get used now. Players have got to be more ready than ever because there are more consistent changes.”

That has seen managers trying to change the narrative around substitutes, adopting terms from other sports. In baseball, they have “closers” — the players who are there to get the final outs in the last throes of a match. In rugby, Eddie Jones, the Japan coach and ex-England coach, introduced the term “finishers” to describe his bench.

“I always believed rugby should be seen as a 23-player game, rather than just the 15 players starting,” he told ESPN. In 2011, Jones was coach of Suntory in Japan and had two brilliant options for the same position — George Gregan and Fourie du Preez at scrum-half. So, he tweaked the terminology — rather than having first and second — he chose Du Preez to start and Gregan as a “finisher”– Jones used Gregan’s love of baseball to put him in the role of the New York Yankees’ Mariano Rivera.

Jones knows Mikel Arteta well — they’re on the same WhatsApp group with coaches from other sports — and Arteta calls his Arsenal bench “impactors.”

“I think it was the best way to express how we feel about them and how they have to feel towards the team, especially on matchday,” Arteta said in 2023. Ex-England boss Gareth Southgate has used the term “finishers” before. For Sammy Lander, a specialist substitutions coach who has worked with the U.S. men’s national team, he says the days of using terms like “super-sub” are numbered.

“The term substitute comes with a lot of negative connotations,” Lander tells ESPN. “When I started my role as a sub coach, I asked players to talk to me about being a substitute. And a lot of the words were sort of defeated, anxious, isolated. We’ve added layers to that. We’d now say, ‘What sort of finisher would you be today?’

“Each club has different names — so I’ll just use Wimbledon as an example, we had six there in the end. We used energizer, impactor, match winner, closer, destroyer and controller. Beyond just super-sub. That gives the player a little bit of direction about what we want from them in the game, but it also really gives them a role in that game, it gives them a process, it gives them an identity to associate with.”

Durán has occupied all six of Lander’s roles this season. But semantics aside, Durán just wants to score goals, so it is down to Emery’s management to keep him and the rest of the team happy.

“It is a squad game now and you must have everyone singing on the same hymn sheet across the whole team,” Le Fondre says.

Emery’s management of Durán is working. The Colombian striker signed a new contract in early October, taking him through to 2030. All this after he nearly left the club in the summer, with as many as 40 clubs keen on signing him, according to sporting director Monchi.

Durán risked the ire of the Villa fans amid strong interest from West Ham when he crossed his arms — mimicking the West Ham symbol — during an Instagram live. In the end, Durán stayed, and as chance had it, Villa’s first match of the season was away at West Ham. Durán came off the bench in the 62nd minute and scored the winner 17 minutes later.

He has done that four times this season.

Emery understands how talented Durán is and has worked with him to ensure he stays patient and focused, while not trying to change his “cheeky” personality, according to an ESPN source.

Emery was measured after seeing Durán’s reaction after being substituted against Bologna. “I am managing everything and the reaction of players,” Emery said. “We are sending a message in the dressing room: respect our values and try to be mature and be responsible. It’s not only Jhon Durán; other players react, but it’s under my control.”

The collective effort has worked. “There’s no magic wand to super-subs,” Sallis says. “The relationship with the manager is massive. The intrinsic motivation from the player is massive: Is it a f— you to the manager? Or is it, ‘I want to help this team’? The key is to get a balance between the two, and Emery has done that.”

However, for now, Watkins remains the first choice. “Sometimes [Durán] has been impatient, and I need to speak to him as a person and connect to him as a person,” Emery said after the Bayern match where Durán had scored the winner. “His talent is there, and he can help us.”

During the last international break, Durán was on the bench twice for Colombia. He impressed again, but that itch of not being in the starting XI remains. Emery has toyed with the option of starting Durán and Watkins together, but it looks like Durán will have to stay patient. Watkins’ form is showing no signs of letting up, but that won’t stop Durán from looking for any and every opportunity to get his spot in the starting lineup.

“I am ready to start wherever I am,” Durán said.

With Villa currently in 6th place in the Premier League and 9th in the Champions League, can Durán continue to make his mark and earn a starting spot? Over the next few weeks, he’ll have his chance against Nottingham Forest (Dec. 14), Man City (Dec. 21) and Newcastle (Dec. 26).