When Brighton appointed Fabian Hürzeler in the summer of 2024, the immediate reaction from most of English football was some variation of: “Who?” He was thirty-one years old. He had managed St. Pauli for eighteen months. He had played professional football at a level so far below elite that it barely registered. He was, on every conventional metric, unqualified for a Premier League job.
Twelve months in, nobody was asking who he was anymore. Brighton had finished seventh in the Premier League. They had played some of the most technically refined football seen at the Amex all season. And Hürzeler himself, calm and forensically analytical in every public appearance, had established himself as one of the most intellectually interesting coaches in English football.
Now in year two, with two new centre-backs — Olivier Boscagli from PSV and Diego Coppola from Hellas Verona — providing the defensive foundation he had lacked in year one, Hürzeler is beginning the next phase of his Brighton project. And the shape it is taking is remarkable.
The De Zerbi Shadow
Every conversation about Brighton football since 2022 takes place in the shadow of Roberto De Zerbi. The Italian’s work at the club — the positional play, the press resistance, the goalkeeper as a tenth outfield player — was so distinctive that it became, briefly, the model other clubs tried to replicate. Hürzeler arrived having absorbed the De Zerbi template, and his first season was, in many respects, a continuation of the principles his predecessor had established.
But year two has shown something different. The 3-4-3 formation that Hürzeler has been exploring since the winter — a direct response to the new defensive personnel available to him — represents a genuine tactical departure, not just an evolution.
Where De Zerbi’s Brighton used a high back four to create pressure in the opponent’s half, Hürzeler’s experimental back three allows him to create numerical superiority in midfield. The two centre-midfielders who might have been covering the halfspaces in a 4-2-3-1 can now be pushed higher, creating a compressed midfield block that operates like a 4-4-2 press without the positional vulnerability of a conventional back four.
Hürzeler has explained the logic in similar public-facing terms: the cover provided by a third centre-back is what frees the midfield two to push higher, the width supplied by the wingbacks is what gives the press its spacing, and the back three is therefore an aggressive choice rather than a conservative one — three defenders, in his framing, deployed to be more aggressive, not less.
This is precisely the kind of counter-intuitive tactical reasoning that marks a genuine tactical thinker from a competent practitioner.
The 3-4-3 in Practice — Build-Up and Press Triggers
The 3-4-3 in practice is built around four specific instructions, each of which matters more than the shape itself.
In build-up, the back three splits wider than convention dictates. The middle centre-back drops marginally deeper than the wide pair, who push higher than a traditional 3 would dare. The result is a 3-2-2-3 in possession, with the wing-backs — Pervis Estupiñán on the left, Tariq Lamptey or Joël Veltman on the right depending on availability — bombing forward to occupy the wide attacking lanes. The two centre-midfielders, usually Carlos Baleba alongside one of James Milner, Mats Wieffer, or the academy graduate Jack Hinshelwood, sit in front of the back three as a double pivot.
Bart Verbruggen, the Dutch goalkeeper, operates as a tenth outfield player throughout the build-up phase. He receives back-passes from his centre-backs at the edge of his own area and begins the next attack with a progressive pass into one of the wide channels. Hürzeler’s instruction is explicit and tolerated even when it goes wrong: receive under pressure, hold the ball if it is safe, pass forward when an outlet appears. He prefers an occasional Verbruggen mistake to a long ball that surrenders possession.
The press fires off a specific trigger: the ball moving from an opposition centre-back to an opposition fullback. At that moment of release, Brighton’s wide forwards — Kaoru Mitoma on the left, Yankuba Minteh on the right — sprint to engage, the ball-side wing-back jumps the next line to mark the opposition’s wide midfielder, and the ball-side centre-back from the three steps up into the half-space. The result is a five-versus-five inside the opposition’s half within two seconds of the pass landing.
This is significantly more aggressive than De Zerbi’s Brighton, which preferred to retain shape and press only when the opposition reached the final third. Hürzeler’s press is faster, higher, and demands more covering distance from his back three than most coaches believe a back three can sustain.
The risk is what happens when the press is broken. The answer is lateral compactness: the moment Brighton are bypassed, the two wider centre-backs slide centrally, the wing-backs sprint back, and the team settles into a five-back recovery shape. The transition is coached to within an inch — which is precisely what Hürzeler’s reputation for granular training work at St. Pauli suggested would be the case.
Boscagli and Coppola: The Building Blocks
The acquisition of Olivier Boscagli in January and Diego Coppola in the summer represents a specific vision. Both are ball-playing central defenders — comfortable receiving under pressure, capable of driving forward, willing to engage in the progressive passing that Hürzeler’s system requires from every position on the pitch.
Boscagli, 27, brings Champions League experience from PSV and a left-footedness that solves a structural problem the previous centre-back pairing had struggled with: building through the left side in a back three requires a defender who is comfortable playing the ball into the half-space, and Boscagli’s natural foot makes this an instinctive rather than a forced choice.
Coppola, 22, is the longer-term projection. He is raw — there have been moments of panic under pressure, a mistake that led to a goal against Manchester City that attracted widespread criticism — but his athleticism and range of passing are exactly what the back three needs to function at full efficiency.
Together, they give Hürzeler something he has been working toward since he arrived: a defensive foundation solid enough that he can experiment with the shape above it without fearing the structural consequences.
The Personnel Matrix — Who Plays Where
The 3-4-3 only works if every position on the pitch has a player fluent in its specific demands. The Brighton squad in 2025-26 has been quietly assembled to provide exactly that fit.
Verbruggen has emerged as one of the Premier League’s better passing goalkeepers — his progressive-pass volume from inside his own box ranks third in the division behind Alisson and Onana. He plays the role of a sweeper-keeper in a way that few clubs trust their goalkeepers to do, regularly stepping outside the box to play short and refusing the long ball even when the press is closing.
The wide centre-backs in the three — Boscagli on the left, Coppola or Veltman on the right — have ball-progression as their primary instruction. They are not asked to head every cross or win every aerial duel; they are asked to find the wing-back’s overlapping run, or the central midfielder dropping into the half-space, with a pass that breaks the opposition’s first line. Lewis Dunk, the captain, anchors the middle of the three when fit and is the only outright defender among them — his role is the cover, the verbal organiser, the safety valve when the pressing structure breaks.
The wing-backs are perhaps the most demanding role on the pitch. Estupiñán on the left has been transformative — his progressive carry distance per 90 leads the entire Premier League. He is asked to be both a wide creator in attack and a halfspace defender in retreat, and the physical demands of the role are evident in Hürzeler’s careful rotation policy. Lamptey when fit is the more attacking right-wing-back option; Veltman the more conservative alternative when defensive solidity is the priority. Hinshelwood, the 19-year-old academy graduate, has been quietly remarkable as a hybrid wing-back / central midfielder, moving between the two roles within a single phase of play in a way that suggests an unusually sophisticated tactical brain for his age.
Carlos Baleba is the engine of the central midfield. The 21-year-old Cameroonian, signed from Lille in 2023, has emerged in year two as one of the most complete midfielders of his age in Europe. His pass completion under press is 92.4%; his interception volume per 90 ranks behind only Declan Rice in the Premier League. Hürzeler has been explicit, repeatedly, that Baleba is the central organising principle of the system rather than one player among many — that the team is being shaped to fit a midfielder rather than the other way around.
In attack, Mitoma remains the focal point — his dribble success rate from the left wing is second only to Bukayo Saka in the Premier League. The right-wing position has been the more rotated of the front three: Minteh, the Gambian winger signed from Newcastle in the summer of 2025, has emerged as the preferred starter, while João Pedro is increasingly deployed as a false-nine or second striker depending on the opposition’s defensive shape. Danny Welbeck, in what may be his final season, provides experience and a focal-point option when Hürzeler wants to play more directly.
This is the depth and tactical fluency Hürzeler’s project requires. Without it, the 3-4-3 becomes brittle — a system held together by personnel rather than by shape. With it, Brighton have the redundancy to execute their core principles regardless of which combination of players is available on a given matchday.
What St. Pauli Already Told Us
Looking back at Hürzeler’s eighteen months at St. Pauli, the patterns that have emerged at Brighton are not surprises. They were the same patterns that took St. Pauli from mid-table 2. Bundesliga to promotion in 2023-24.
At St. Pauli, Hürzeler ran a 3-4-2-1 — structurally a close cousin of the Brighton 3-4-3, with one of the wide forwards withdrawn into a 10 role behind a lone striker. The press triggers were identical. The wing-back demands were identical. The trust placed in the goalkeeper to play out under pressure was identical. What has changed at Brighton is the personnel quality and the willingness to attempt those instructions against opposition that can punish mistakes; the principles themselves have not.
Two specific St. Pauli matches are worth noting in this light. A 2-0 win over Holstein Kiel in February 2024 produced an expected-goals output of 3.4 — generated almost entirely from sequences that began with goalkeeper distribution, his Verbruggen-equivalent finding the wide channels under pressure. A 1-0 win over Hamburg in March 2024 saw St. Pauli’s wing-back complete fourteen progressive carries, the highest figure in any 2. Bundesliga match that season. These were the early proof-of-concepts for the system Hürzeler is now refining at the Amex.
The transition has not been seamless — Premier League opposition is, predictably, faster, more positionally astute, and less forgiving than 2. Bundesliga sides — but the underlying playbook is the same one Hürzeler has been writing for three years. Brighton are not getting an experiment. They are getting a refined version of a system that has already worked at a different level.
The European Question
Brighton’s seventh-place finish last season put them tantalisingly close to European football — a Europa League place would have required overtaking Newcastle on goal difference in the final weekend. In 2025-26, with a stronger defensive unit and a second season of Hürzeler’s coaching embedding itself in the squad, the push for Europe has become the explicit aim.
In April 2026, they sit sixth, three points behind Newcastle with six games remaining. The mathematics are favourable; the fixtures are manageable. A first European campaign since 2023-24 is a genuine possibility.
The significance of this extends beyond the immediate. Brighton’s ownership model — identify undervalued talent, develop through elite coaching, sell at significant profit — works best when the club is attractive enough to sell the vision to players who might otherwise choose more established clubs. European football makes the conversation with those players much easier.
Hürzeler understands this. He has spoken repeatedly about the need to “build something permanent” at the club, in contrast to what he characterises as the model of rapid turnover that depletes squad cohesion. The 3-4-3, the investment in centre-backs, the patience with young players — all of it points toward a two or three-year project rather than a season-by-season iteration.
Set Pieces — The Brighton Specialism
No discussion of Hürzeler’s Brighton is complete without addressing set pieces. Under James French — the analytics-trained set-piece coach Tony Bloom hired in 2023, retained through both the De Zerbi and Hürzeler eras — Brighton have become arguably the most efficient team in the Premier League at converting set-piece situations into goals.
In 2025-26, 32% of Brighton’s goals have come from set pieces. That is the highest proportion in the division, and a remarkable figure for a team whose primary identity is possession football. The choreography is specific: corners that target the near-post zone with runners arriving from deep; free-kicks in the wide attacking third that are worked short to a player drifting inside, who then crosses from a more dangerous angle; throw-ins in the opposition half treated as designed attacking opportunities with pre-rehearsed patterns.
Hürzeler has integrated French’s set-piece routines into the broader rhythm of training rather than treating them as a separate department, which is how most Premier League clubs handle dead-ball work. The result is a team for which every dead-ball situation is a designed attacking opportunity, not a recovery moment.
This matters at Brighton’s level. The teams competing for European places are usually the ones that find an extra eight or ten goals from sources other clubs leave on the table. For Brighton in 2025-26, set pieces are precisely that source — and the difference between sixth and ninth in a tightly compressed table.
What Makes Him Different
It is worth trying to articulate what specifically makes Hürzeler interesting, beyond the narrative hook of his age and the absence of a playing career at the top level.
The first thing is his commitment to in-session coaching. Whereas many managers operate at arm’s length during training — communicating through assistants, observing from a distance, intervening only at set-piece moments — Hürzeler is conspicuously hands-on. He interrupts rondos to correct positions. He pauses possession exercises to talk through the decision-making process of a single player’s pass. The granularity of his attention to detail in sessions is, by the accounts of players who have worked with him, unlike anything they have experienced.
The second is his use of data without being controlled by it. Brighton are, famously, one of the most analytically sophisticated clubs in England. The Hürzeler appointment was itself partly a data-driven decision — his numbers at St. Pauli suggested patterns of play that the analysis team had identified as consistent with Brighton’s values. But Hürzeler has been publicly clear, in a way that impresses players, that data is input rather than instruction. He trusts what he sees on the pitch to override what the spreadsheet suggests.
The third — and perhaps most important — is his calmness under public pressure. Brighton lost four of their first eight Premier League games in year two. The back three was struggling. Coppola made the mistake against City. There were questions, briefly, about whether the experiment was working. Hürzeler did not change the system. He adjusted the details within it, and the results improved. This kind of conviction, in a young manager in his first major job, is unusual enough to be worth noting.
The Verdict
Brighton’s story, since Tony Bloom transformed the club over fifteen years, has been a series of appointments that looked, from the outside, like risks — and turned out to be something closer to vision. The recruitment of Potter. The recruitment of De Zerbi. Now Hürzeler.
In year two, the appointment looks more correct than it did in year one. The 3-4-3 is working. The European push is real. The squad has absorbed a second season of intensive coaching and is beginning to express it in ways that the first season’s transitional nature prevented.
Fabian Hürzeler is thirty-two years old and managing a Premier League club toward a potential first European campaign with growing conviction and considerable tactical sophistication. The question — as it always is with Brighton managers — is not whether he will succeed here. It is how long before someone from the very top comes calling.