In football there are far too many cliches and as sports journalists we try to avoid them. I like it when reporters try to invent new terms and I am claiming “boxburster’ as my own.

The reason I have coined the term is because there don’t seem to be many “boxbursters” about any more. Boxburster, as opposed to a box-to-box player, describes a goalscoring central midfielder who often goes beyond the strikers in his effort to score, hence busting into the box.

In days gone by there were the likes of Bryan Robson, Zinedine Zidane, Falcao, Bobby Charlton, Diego Maradona, Paul Gascoigne, Michel Platini. (We can debate until the cows come home whether some of these were really strikers in the ‘hole”).

A lot of those names are English and today possibly the two best goalscoring central midfielders in the game are Chelsea’s Frank Lampard and Liverpool’s Steven Gerrard. Arsenal’s young Spain midfielder Cesc Fabregas has suddenly started hitting the back of the net this season too.

In other European leagues though there appears to be a lack of central midfielders slotting home.

In Italy, three of the top teams are characterised by their defensive midfielders in the middle of the park.

AC Milan employ Andrea Pirlo, Gennaro Gattuso, Massimo Ambrosini and Clarence Seedorf, none of whom consistently go beyond Kaka and Alberto Gilardino into the box. Inter Milan play with two of Javier Zanetti, Esteban Cambiasso, Olivier Dacourt or Patrick Vieira in central midfield and leave it up to wingers to support the front men. The same is true at Juventus with only AS Roma’s Simone Perrotta and occasionally Daniele De Rossi getting beyond their one striker.

Barcelona’s three-pronged attack in Spain (Henry/Eto’o, Ronaldinho, Messi) generally prevents central midfielders including Deco from really attacking. Real Madrid have Wesley Sneijder and Guti but to me they don’t quite burst like those in the past.

A couple of links: Yahoo poll on 10 greatest midfielders and an interesting ESPN article on Europe’s top young goalscorers:

PS: How many footballing cliches did you spot above?

PHOTO: Zinedine Zidane, boxburster extraordinaire, scores for France against Cyprus at the Stade de France, October 12, 2005. REUTERS/Franck Prevel