Marcos Senesi completed 144 successful line-breaking passes in the Premier League last season.
Bruno Fernandes completed 145.
Dominik Szoboszlai completed 137.
That is not a comparison designed to argue that Senesi is a better playmaker than either midfielder. It reveals something more interesting about what a modern centre-back can now be asked to do.
Premier League defenders have been major passing hubs for years. Lewis Dunk led the entire division for attempted passes in 2022/23, while centre-backs were already appearing prominently among the league’s leading final-third passers the following season.
So 2025/26 did not invent the ball-playing centre-back.
What Senesi and Jan Paul van Hecke showed instead was how far the role can now extend beyond simply keeping possession.
Figure 1 — Premier League centre-backs topped the line-breaking charts in 2025/26. (Source: Premier League)
Passing a lot is not the same as playmaking
Not every pass from a centre-back performs the same function.
It helps to think about distribution in three levels.
The first is circulation.
A defender receives from the goalkeeper, moves the ball sideways and finds another centre-back, full-back or nearby midfielder. Those passes are important because they preserve possession and move the opposition, but they do not necessarily change the structure of the attack.
The second is progression.
Now the defender moves possession meaningfully towards goal, either with a forward pass or a carry.
The third is playmaking.
This is where the pass changes the opponent.
A line-breaking ball can eliminate one or more layers of pressure and find a player positioned behind them. Instead of merely moving possession forward, it changes which defenders are still involved in the phase.
Senesi and Van Hecke repeatedly reached that third level in 2025/26.
Van Hecke made 457 line-breaking passes, the most in the Premier League. Senesi followed with 424, while midfielder Elliot Anderson ranked third on 375.
These were not simply defenders completing large numbers of safe passes because their teams had possession.
They were regularly responsible for the pass that changed the shape of the possession itself.
The role existed before 2025/26
There is an important counterargument here.
Centre-backs have been central to build-up for years.
Dunk attempted 3,208 Premier League passes in 2022/23, more than any other player in the competition.
At a January 2024 checkpoint, Joachim Andersen ranked third in the Premier League for passes into the final third with 237, while Dunk ranked sixth with 191. Senesi himself led Bournemouth with 153.
Van Hecke’s development was already visible too. During 2023/24, Brighton were asking him to receive and distribute under pressure in tight areas; at the cited early-season checkpoint, his passing accuracy stood at 94.48%.
Then came 2024/25.
Van Hecke led Premier League centre-backs with 176 progressive passes, averaging 5.9 per 90 minutes. Andersen averaged 4.2, while Virgil van Dijk and Dean Huijsen were both at 4.0.
Figure 2 — The progressive centre-back already existed before 2025/26. (Source: Premier League)
That history changes the interpretation.
The story is not that defenders suddenly discovered forward passing last season.
It is that an established responsibility reached an unusually high ceiling.
Senesi and Van Hecke pushed beyond circulation
Senesi’s 2025/26 season is particularly useful because his progression appeared in several different forms.
He led Premier League centre-backs with 516 passes into the final third, ahead of Van Dijk on 425 and Van Hecke on 383. He also completed 182 long passes, more than Andersen’s 166 and Van Dijk’s 137.
Then there was the creative output.
Senesi created 24 chances, 22 of them from open play, and attempted 14 through-balls.
The minutes-adjusted numbers strengthen the argument.
Opta recorded Senesi with 233 progressive passes, the most of any Premier League player, at 6.3 per 90. Van Hecke ranked third with 191, or 5.4 per 90.
The same analysis found Senesi and Van Hecke ranked first and second for passes breaking two opposition lines, with 72 and 51 respectively. Senesi also led the league with eight passes breaking three lines.
That is where “ball-playing centre-back” starts to feel too vague.
Almost any elite defender now needs to be comfortable receiving possession.
These players were doing something beyond comfort.
They were changing where attacks began.
One penetrating pass can change the midfield
Imagine a centre-back receives the ball with the opposition’s first pressing line ahead of him.
A conventional solution is to find the holding midfielder.
That midfielder drops towards the defensive line, receives and then tries to turn or find the next pass.
But if the centre-back can consistently play beyond that first line himself, the midfielder no longer has to drop solely to move the ball forward.
He can remain higher.
That changes the geometry of the build-up.
Instead of using a midfielder to connect defence and attack, the centre-back can become the connector, bypassing the opposition’s pass. The midfielder can occupy an opponent further forward. Another attacker may receive between the lines because the defender has removed two players from the phase with one pass.
This is why line-breaking is more revealing than raw passing volume.
The question is not simply how often the defender touched the ball.
It is what happened to the opposition when he released it.
Van Hecke’s numbers are especially difficult to dismiss as a one-season curiosity. Brighton recorded that he made 36 Premier League appearances in 2025/26 and led the division with 457 line-breaking passes, while also noting that he had led the league in the same category the previous season.
His progression has become part of the role, rather than a temporary spike.
Short or long is the wrong argument
Senesi also illustrates why the debate around modern build-up is sometimes framed too narrowly.
We often separate possession football and direct football as opposites.
Yet one of the Premier League’s most progressive centre-backs was also one of its most prolific long passers.
Figure 3 — Senesi could progress both through and over the opposition. (Source: Premier League)
That fitted the wider tactical environment.
Premier League football became more direct in 2025/26, in fact after 210 Premier League matches, teams were averaging 99.6 long balls per match, compared with 93.4 in 2024/25, while passing sequences remained relatively short. Senesi led non-goalkeepers for long-ball volume at that point.
More direct football therefore did not make progressive centre-backs less relevant.
It arguably makes the definition of progression broader.
If the opposition press high, a centre-back might beat them with a sharp vertical pass through midfield.
If the press blocks those routes, the same defender might go over it.
The important ability is not loyalty to one style of pass.
It is having multiple ways to defeat pressure.
Senesi also weakens the possession-inflation argument
Brighton provide an obvious challenge when interpreting defender passing numbers.
A side that regularly asks its centre-backs to receive the ball can naturally inflate their passing volume.
That does not make Van Hecke’s numbers meaningless, particularly when line-breaking and per-90 progression remain so strong.
But Senesi offers an important comparison because the Premier League’s analysis explicitly notes that Bournemouth were not a possession-based side.
His output therefore cannot simply be explained by endless circulation at the back.
He played 37 Premier League matches, so availability certainly helped the raw totals.
But the per-90 evidence survives that adjustment: 6.3 progressive passes per 90 still led the competition.
Volume was part of the story.
It was not all of it.
Two outliers do not make a positional revolution
This is where the argument needs a boundary.
There is not enough comparable public historical line-breaking data to establish that Premier League centre-backs as a group became dramatically more progressive in 2025/26.
Senesi and Van Hecke may simply represent the extreme end of an existing role.
In fact, the historical evidence supports exactly that caution.
Dunk was already leading the league in pass attempts three seasons earlier.
Andersen and Dunk were prominent final-third passers in 2023/24.
Van Hecke was already the leading progressive-passing centre-back in 2024/25.
So this should not be presented as the moment defenders became creators.
The evidence supports something narrower and more interesting.
The positional ceiling expanded.
The modern playmaking centre-back is defined by effect
A centre-back can complete 100 passes and spend most of the match circulating possession.
Another can complete fewer, yet repeatedly eliminate pressure, find players between the lines or bypass an entire block with one long ball.
Only one of those performances necessarily resembles playmaking.
That is what Senesi and Van Hecke help clarify.
The modern centre-back is no longer remarkable merely because he looks comfortable with the ball. That expectation has existed for years.
What separates the most progressive defenders is responsibility.
They do not simply wait for a midfielder to organise the attack.
They can organise the first decisive action themselves.
Sometimes that means breaking one line.
Sometimes two.
Occasionally, in Senesi’s case, three.
And sometimes it means ignoring the lines entirely and passing over them.
That is why “ball-playing centre-back” may no longer tell us enough.
The more useful question is not whether a defender can pass.
It is whether his passing forces the opposition to reorganise.
When it does, he is no longer just helping to build the attack.
He is helping to create it.
The main image is from KelvinStuttard on pixabay with the article title overlay.
