Reverse substitutions

Was listening to an interesting coaching podcast the other day where an Italian coach put forward the concept of reverse substitutions.

... ie the majority of teams start with their best strikers and then sub them off after 60 mins, and logically that's the wrong thing to do because you'd want your best strikers, at their freshest, playing against tired defenders.
Currently, for the first 60 mins your best strikers are playing against the best defenders who are at their freshest and strongest.

His logic was to start with your second tier of strikers and tell them to run to their absolute maximum until they are exhausted and then bring on your better strikers.

... but he wasn't talking about subbing the second tier off at half-time or 60mins - he was advocating doing it after 30 minutes .... because your main strikers get 15 mins, a break at half-time, then the entire 2nd half .... or if the 2nd tier strikers were doing superbly well then leave them on until they're not.

This tied in with his thoughts that defenders are also struggling more towards half-time.

In a nutshell, it's about starting with competence and then the side getting better and stronger as the game goes on.