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“‘F****** hell, lad. Stop running!” a Newcastle United winger told Antonee Robinson during a game against Fulham last season.
Robinson loves overlapping and underlapping and treats the left flank like the back-straight on an athletics track, tearing forward at every opportunity to add to his increasingly impressive attacking returns. He has eight assists in the Premier League since the start of last season, which is second only to Kieran Trippier when it comes to defenders.
As for interceptions, Robinson’s numbers are off the scale. There were 13 in one game at Anfield last season, equalling a Premier League record and keeping Mohamed Salah relatively quiet in the process.
Two years earlier, on the opening day of the Premier League season, Salah was so struck by Robinson’s performance for Fulham that he stopped to ask him his age in the middle of the match. Later, after they swapped shirts, the Liverpool forward gave him some words of encouragement that Robinson has never forgotten.
(Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)
Robinson is discussing all of this and more at his home in Surrey, on the outskirts of London, where we are scrolling through close to 100 clips of him playing for Fulham and the U.S. men’s national team. There are backflips and diving headers, own goals and crunching tackles, shoulder barges against one of the strongest players in the Premier League, and running races where there was only going to be one winner.
This is Antonee Robinson’s game in his words.
“I love it,” Robinson says, smiling.
It’s hard to imagine many modern full-backs saying the same thing, mindful that Robinson is talking about one-on-one defending. The 27-year-old feels like a bit of a throwback in that respect.
“I always go into games thinking, ‘I’m playing against a winger now and I don’t want him to get the better of me’. I feel like I can read where a player is going fairly well. But the ability to not fly in, to stand them up and then pick my time to close in on someone, I do really enjoy that,” he says.
Robinson made 80 interceptions in the Premier League last season. To put that number into perspective, it was the most across Europe’s top five leagues, 15 more than any other Premier League player (Bournemouth’s Lewis Cook was in second place) and almost twice as many as any other Premier League full-back (West Ham’s Emerson Palmieri made 43).
“Obviously because I’m quite fast, it helps,” Robinson says in an understated way. “I feel confident knowing that I’m gonna get to most passes when I see them.
“But it’s quite annoying to the manager at times because sometimes I’ll be convinced the pass is going somewhere and almost gamble a little bit. And then it goes the other way and he hates it when I guess. He always says, ‘You’re fast enough to get there. Just stay, let it go (to the winger), and then go’. But sometimes when you smell something, you have the urge.”
Robinson’s scent is normally reliable. His trademark interception is cutting out the short and low diagonal pass to the winger outside of him — an action that he repeated over and again last season, including on multiple occasions against Tottenham Hotspur.
“I think the way they play would suit this because they invert the full-backs, they’re really narrow, and the winger is the only wide pass (available),” Robinson explains as we watch a couple of clips against Spurs. “So when I can see that’s literally the only pass he’s going to do, even if I go here (wide to try to intercept) and he plays it here (inside), there’s nothing on, so it feels safer to go. But you can see (on the video) that I’m just eyeing him up.”
Although Robinson said he will “almost gamble a little bit”, his interceptions are calculated. Before setting off, he looks at the body orientation of the player in possession and also waits until the passer (Bruno Guimaraes in the next example) focuses on striking the ball.
“When he’s put his head down, you can kind of see the direction of the pass — he’s going to pass here (wide) and I need to go that way anyway,” Robinson says. “This line (infield) is blocked off by our midfielder, which obviously the gaffer (Marco Silva) sets us up to do. So it looks like the only pass is (wide).”
If the distance between the passer and the receiver is close, which was the case when Robinson intercepted a ball from Julian Alvarez to Phil Foden at Manchester City last season, the risk of being caught out increases.
“I can remember similar ones to this where I would get done,” Robinson says. “Obviously I’ve seen him (Alvarez) put his head down, I know he’s passing there, so I’ve gone. But I think we played Liverpool, it was the exact same situation, it’s Trent (Alexander-Arnold) on the ball and he looks like he’s gonna pass it there (to the winger) and he plays it inside me; that’s the one I said the gaffer despises. He goes mental at that. Luckily, this one I made it.”
He has a good memory. The Liverpool clip is lined up ready to show him as a rare example of when that darting run to intercept goes wrong. Alexander-Arnold disguises his intentions, reverses the pass and Luis Diaz runs in behind.
Robinson sighs. “With that, I should know a lot better who’s on the ball. But, you know, playing against good teams you get excited. So that is a prime example of the manager waiting to kick off at me. I’m already thinking, ‘He’s gonna want to speak to me about that’.”
An aggressive, front-footed defender, Robinson enjoys an old-fashioned 50/50. “Without hurting anyone, I do like being able to leave it on someone,” he says as we watch him making fully committed but fair challenges on Bournemouth’s Adam Smith and Everton’s Abdoulaye Doucoure (below).
Robinson’s biggest attribute by far when one-v-one defending, though, is his pace. A clip of him up against the Nottingham Forest attacker Anthony Elanga, who has registered the second-fastest speed in the Premier League this season, illustrates that point. Fulham have turned over possession and Robinson is running back on the outside of Elanga, which is the last place a full-back wants to be ordinarily, but he still manages to get to the ball first. Elanga is left on his hands and knees afterwards.
“I remember one of the first passages of play here — the ball broke and both me and Elanga ended up sprinting and he’s leaving me in this race, which I didn’t expect,” Robinson says. “I was like, ‘S***. If he gets the ball, he’s in’. I knew he was quick, but he’s top-level speed. After that, I was way more cautious of the threat in behind.”
Robinson’s speed means that throughout his career, he has been deployed as the “last man” on attacking corners, essentially as an insurance policy if the opposition counter. Liverpool’s Darwin Nunez tried and failed to win a race against Robinson from a Fulham corner last season and there was a similar scenario in the home game against Everton when Arnaut Danjuma attempted to beat him on the outside.
“He’s got to know his players there!” Robinson says, laughing. “I’d say 95 per cent of wingers, if they’re going to just try to knock it down the line and run me, I’m buzzing with that. So I was very happy when he tried that because it makes my decision so much easier.”
Robinson talks about getting tight on wingers and “not letting them breathe”. Away at Brentford last season, he was all over Bryan Mbeumo from the first minute, giving him no time on the ball. Half an hour into the game, Mbeumo let a routine pass slip under his boot by the touchline, prompting the co-commentator and former Fulham and West Ham defender Tony Gale to suggest Robinson had got inside the Brentford player’s head.
“He’s miscontrolled that because he’s looking at Robinson, thinking, ‘He’s gonna be on me sharp’. He’s taken his eye off the ball and that’s the little bit of shakiness Robinson’s put on Mbeumo early on. It’s up to Mbeumo to play a little bit of cat and mouse with him.”
Is it a game of cat and mouse with the winger?
“I suppose so,” Robinson replies, smiling. “Sometimes you end up talking to players in games, which is quite funny. I remember playing Newcastle, not this last game (this season), but a couple of games ago and Jacob Murphy was playing and he was like, ‘F****** hell, lad — stop running!’ So, little things like that — straight away they know what I’m like. And it does play a little part (in putting wingers off their game). There’s going to be players who will come at me less because they know I’m going to go the other way a lot of the time.”
Equally, there are also games where Robinson is largely defending because of the calibre of opposition. Arsenal at home last season was one of those occasions and it turned into a fascinating duel between him and Bukayo Saka in a game that Fulham won 2-1.
The first clip shows Robinson following Saka infield, shoulder-charging him and winning the ball. Robinson puffs out his cheeks after watching it. “That’s an incredibly rare occurrence because Saka is crazy strong. He’s one of the strongest players, pound for pound, that I’ve played against.”
Later in the game, Saka gets his own back in another physical duel, as if to prove Robinson’s point.
In between times, there are a couple of moments in quick succession where Robinson ends up defending one-on-one with Saka near the touchline and close to the corner flag. Robinson shows Saka down the line, forcing him onto his weaker right foot. In the first instance, Saka still manages to cross — albeit his delivery is overhit.
On the second occasion, Saka goes the same way again and Robinson blocks.
It’s tempting to think Robinson’s defending was much better the second time because he stopped the cross, but he doesn’t really see it like that.
“The first one I was still happy with,” Robinson says. “I know Saka’s very good on his left foot. If I show him down the line and he manages to get a cross in… I’d obviously like to block it, but if he’s crossing on his right foot and that’s the worst-case scenario, that’s fine. Next one you kind of know how he’s going to be shaped when he goes that way (again), so I can close it down a little bit better. But if I show him on his right every time and half of them he crosses and half of them he doesn’t, it’s a lot better than him cutting in on his left to pick a ball properly or shooting.”
(David Price/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)
An “unlucky” own goal at Villa Park in November in a 3-1 defeat. At least that was how Robinson viewed it at the time. Marco Silva thought otherwise.
Either way, that own goal represented a turning point in Robinson’s season. He went on to register assists in three successive Premier League matches (the first in the second half against Villa), scored two terrific goals for the USMNT against Trinidad & Tobago during the international break that followed, then produced one of the best performances of his career against Liverpool a couple of weeks later at Anfield.
“My season took off,” Robinson says.
The own goal is interesting to break down, especially as Robinson told The Athletic previously that Silva had said to him: “If you were in this position in the first place, maybe that wouldn’t have happened and you would not have been ‘unlucky’.”
What is this position?
Robinson asks to take the footage further back to explain. “Here, when we looked at this, the manager would like Calvin (Bassey) to be two yards this way (sliding to the right), being able to cover the line a bit better. If he’s there, Tim (Ream) is three yards over and then I’m inside this winger (Moussa Diaby). Obviously, it gets played (down the line to Youri Tielemans) and you’ll see when I come in.
“Realistically, you’d want me to be here (the black circle below), so just five yards inside this line. And if I’m already there, he (Diaby) is not in front of me.
“Still, after that, he (Diaby) missed the ball. So I do get unlucky. But it’s always the steps leading up to that which you can prevent in the gaffer’s mind.”
By his own admission, Robinson was lacking in confidence ahead of that Villa match. He scored an own goal against Sheffield United the previous month and talks about going into games around that period thinking, ‘Just don’t make any big mistakes. Just do your job. Simple’.”
International weeks can be viewed as disruptive by a lot of club managers, but a change of scenery was probably just what Robinson needed. He joined up with the USMNT for the CONCACAF Nations League quarter-final tie against Trinidad & Tobago and thrived. In the first leg, in Texas, Robinson assisted the opening goal and then scored the second with a superb strike that was followed by a series of backflips that were just as impressive.
“Big moment!” Robinson says, smiling. “I dyed my hair white because I thought, ‘You know what, I’m just gonna do something mad’, and then I scored a good goal, so I was very excited.”
Four days later, in the away fixture, Robinson scored a diving header. “I’m more happy with this one, to be honest. Because I remember him (Sergino Dest) getting it and me being out here (very wide), I was just like, ‘I’m going to dart in between the defenders’. It was a proper striker’s goal.”
Robinson returned to England “feeling better about myself”. He got an assist against Wolves in Fulham’s next match and then put in a man-of-the-match performance against Liverpool. The 13 interceptions made headlines and one of them (below) led to an assist for Fulham’s first goal.
Watching the game back, it’s remarkable how often Robinson seemed to be in the right place at the right time to limit Salah’s impact in a match that Fulham lost 4-3 despite leading with less than five minutes remaining.
Did Salah say anything to him afterwards? “Not this time,” Robinson replies. “He has before. We played Liverpool in the first game of the season two years ago. We drew 2-2. I remember saying to my friends, who are all big Liverpool fans and came down because it was around my birthday, ‘Lads, if Salah scores or gets an assist this game, I’ll pay for dinner tonight’, so I put a bit of added pressure on myself. And he (Salah) did (score), annoyingly.
“But I remember him saying to me midway through the game (Robinson says this next bit in a curious voice), ‘How old are you?’. So he didn’t really know who I was. I must have been 24, 25. He just nodded and carried on with the game. Then, after the game, I asked for his shirt, so we swapped shirts and we were just chatting and he was like, ‘You were the best player this game, keep up what you’re doing’. That was very nice of him.”
A routine question about whether Robinson has had the opportunity to speak to Mauricio Pochettino since the Argentinian took over as head coach of the USMNT delivers an unexpected answer.
“Funnily enough, I bumped into him out for dinner the other day,” Robinson says. “We had a team meal in London and he just happened to be in there. I was sat next to Harrison Reed, who used to play for him at Southampton, so he went over to speak to him and I just went over and said hello. I was chatting to him and it seems like he’s really excited about it (coaching the USMNT).”
Pochettino’s appointment followed the decision to sack Gregg Berhalter in the wake of a dismal Copa America showing in the summer when the U.S. were eliminated in the group stage.
“We obviously wanted to push as far as we could in the tournament and try to win it,” Robinson says. “We didn’t even get the chance to get out of the group, which is a big, big letdown for us, especially us being the host nation.”
The Copa America post-mortem started immediately after the final whistle against Uruguay. Christian Pulisic, the U.S. captain, spoke about the need to regroup and, more significantly, highlighted the importance of “finding an identity again”.
(Bill Barrett/ISI Photos/USSF/Getty Images for USSF)
With 46 caps to his name and six years of international experience behind him, including a World Cup in Qatar, Robinson has been around the team for long enough to know what the U.S. should look like on the pitch. What is their identity?
“Well, thinking back to teams before us, the U.S. was always gritty, hard-working, horrible to play against, a battling team,” he says. “They had good players but, on the whole, as a team, there was a lot of fight in them. And when we first came together as a team, we definitely had that a lot. I remember going into the World Cup, playing against England and feeling that we can make it extremely difficult for teams. But towards the end, it felt kind of soft and stagnant. We didn’t have that bite.
“I didn’t get to go to the last (international) window and obviously we had a different manager (Mikey Varas). But I was watching us play against Canada and it just felt like they were out-fighting us. I’d back us, at our best, as a better team than them comfortably. But you have to win that fight first.
“They (Canada) did the same thing in World Cup qualifying, where they were just nasty; horrible to play against. And I think that’s something we need to get a bit of because we’re not the most talented team. So that needs to be a minimum.”
Pochettino touched on some of those themes at a press conference this week, when he highlighted Argentina’s desire to win the ball back and said it’s not just about trying to play “nice football”.
On the face of it, Pochettino’s style of play feels like a good fit for Robinson’s game. “Yeah, I think so,” Robinson says. “I think it will suit a lot of the players on our team. And, regardless, just having a fresh set of eyes and a new perspective — I think every now and then, it gets to a point where a team does need that.
“You obviously see under his resume that he’s a top-level coach. It’s going to be interesting to see how that transitions from club level to international level in terms of how much control he can have on it. He’s not going to see us every day. He’s not got a lot of time to drill into us how he wants to play. But that’s where we’ve got to step up and take responsibility and say it’s not all just on him. We need to give him as much attention and commitment as possible and make it work between us.”
“I can feel the moment when I change gears,” Robinson says.
It’s quite a sight watching Robinson overlapping to receive a pass — a bit like an Olympic sprinter setting off in the relay and waiting to be handed the baton.
According to data from SkillCorner, Arsenal’s Ben White was the only Premier League full-back to make more overlapping runs than Robinson last season.
SkillCorner define an overlap as a high-intensity sprint that captures a player moving at over 20 km/h for at least 0.7 seconds. Yet a significant number of Robinson’s overlaps start from inside his own half, last for 3-4 seconds and see him reaching much higher speeds than 20 km/h.
“I’ve done half a pitch there!” Robinson says, laughing, as we watch him overlapping against Forest (below).
The sprint for another overlap, this time against Liverpool in the Carabao Cup, starts not far outside his own penalty area. Robinson has his hand in the air as Joao Palhinha takes possession and appears to be gesturing to the midfielder where to pass next. What’s going through his mind here?
“I think, ‘Who would I rather have the ball in this situation?’ If he (Palhinha) gives it to me, Willy’s going to run and I’m going to run and we’re going to end up in the same sort of pocket. If he gives it to Willy first, Willy is already higher up and I’m going to catch up because he’s got to wait for the ball. Willy is right-footed, he can run inside, commit a defender. If the defender goes with me, Willy is going to end up shooting. So in this situation, Willy getting the ball and me coming with speed is 10 times better than me getting it.”
‘Willy’ is Willian, the former Chelsea and Arsenal winger and a player Robinson built up an excellent understanding with at Fulham over the course of two seasons. His departure in the summer has paved the way for Robinson and Alex Iwobi to link up on the left much more frequently than before and the signs are already promising. A Robinson overlap and low cross, after a pass from Iwobi, led to Fulham’s goal at Ipswich earlier this season.
The week before, against Leicester, it was Robinson’s first-time ball that set up Iwobi for Fulham’s winner. “The understanding is getting there,” Robinson says.
Naturally, it’s much easier to develop chemistry with team-mates at club level compared with international football because of the constant repetition on the training ground, as well as the regular cycle of matches.
That said, Robinson clearly has an excellent understanding with Pulisic when it comes to his attacking runs (the clip below shows an overlap against Bolivia in the Copa America that Ricardo Pepi should have converted) and he makes it sound as though there are a lot of parallels with playing left-back for Fulham and the USMNT.
“It’s really similar,” Robinson says. “We do have a bit more licence that I can go (forward with the U.S.). If the right-back was attacking, like Sergino, or like when (Joe) Scally was playing in Copa, I can still be high because we’d have two midfielders who would sit and do that defensive box.
“But playing with Christian is very similar. We have that same understanding of, ‘You’re our most dangerous player. I’m going to give you the ball. I’ll give you the option of sprinting behind if you want to use it. If you don’t want to use it, that means you think it’s a better option, so I trust you with that’. And we have a great relationship off the pitch anyway, so it does translate to being on the same page on it.”
(Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images)
Playing next to the same player for club and country helps — as was the case with Tim Ream up until August when the central defender joined Charlotte FC. Robinson and Ream were always on the same wavelength and had a lot of joy with a move that would see the left-winger, or No 8, come short and narrow, leaving space for Robinson to run in behind and Ream to pick him out with a longer pass.
It’s a simple but effective pattern that pulls opponents out of position.
“Opposite movements — that’s a big thing in our game (at Fulham),” Robinson says.
The footage ends with an assist that provides another example of how hard Robinson has worked to improve the quality of his final ball. “A lot of my assists have come from low crosses, which is something we do a lot after training,” he explains. “Just kind of feeding it into that danger area along the six-yard line, like the Ipswich one.”
He must be happy with his numbers: eight assists since the start of last season is an excellent return for a left-back.
“I can’t complain about that, considering the two Premier League seasons before that I had one,” Robinson says, smiling. “But a couple of goals would be nice. I haven’t scored in the Premier League yet, so I’ve got my eye on that.”
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(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)
