Let me start by quoting Jonathan Wilson, who had literally wrote a book on history of football tactics. In his article "The Question: is the box-to-box midfielder dead?" he names a few players that very much defined the role of a box-to-box midfielder... wouldn't you guess it, it's Bryan Robson, Roy Keane and Lothar Matthäus:Lets look at a neutral source: https://www.transfermarkt.us/lothar-matthaus/profil/spieler/1527
Even when he played B2B, for the most part he was tasked with tackling higher up the pitch and passing it. He had a few excellent goal scoring seasons (because he was outstanding) but that doesn't mean his main job wasn't to tackle higher up the pitch. He was a DM/CB and rarely played B2B. It would be like Kante at Lecesiter scoring 15-20 goals. Kante's job was to tackle higher up the pitch but you wouldn't call him B2B.
Rijkaard partnered Ancelotti in CM and Ancelotti was definitely an attack-minded B2B midfielder. I don't think Rijkaard has ever played as B2B at Milan.
If Carlo was injured then Colombo was generally shifted to CM (even though he was generally RW backup to Donadoni).
At Ajax (after Milan) he was a CB/DM and never a B2B - that was Seedorf/R De Boer/Musampa.
If you're going to use transfermarkt, it's better to understand how it works. It doesn't have the positional data on most of the 1980's & for a lot of the 1990's, which is why when you see the detailed version of his positions the number of games don't really match the amount of the games that transfermarkt itself shows for his entire career.Jonathan Wilson said:And then it occurred to me that complete midfielders, those great drivers of teams who could both score goals and make tackles, are generally a declining breed. After Robson there came Löthar Matthaus, David Platt, then Roy Keane and thereafter, well, nobody. The question is why.
And even in that very limited patch of games that mostly cover the very late stage of his career (hence the number of CB appearances — or sweeper to be exact, a role that he had played when his legs were more or less gone) he has more CM appearances than he has DM:
By "a few excellent goalscoring seasons" you mean 11 seasons when he had scored more than 10 goals including seasons when he had scored 19, 21 and 23 goals?
And you seem to have a very weird definition of box-to-box if "tackling and passing" isn't included. It is the main part of the box-to-box midfielder's game — literally contribution to every stage of the game, winning the ball back in his own box, carrying it forward and scoring from inside of the opposition's box. Hence the name.
There were different varieties of box-to-box players. Some were more defensive like Rijkaard, Keane, Tigana, Davids etc. Some where more attacking like Robson, Breitner, Lerby or, well, peak Matthäus, who was often his team's main goalscorer — take the 1990/91 season where he had scored more league goals (16) than Inter's main striker, Klinsmann (14).
As for Rijkaard — when I talked about him being a B2B at Ajax, I was talking about his first spell there. He was that team's best midfielder who was responsible for literally everything — winning the ball back, dictating the play and even providing a brilliant secondary goalscoring threat behind van Basten. It's not a coincidence that he had scored around 10 goals per season during his latter seasons there.
Rijkaard at his second stint at Ajax, under van Gaal, was obviously not a B2B, he was sitting at the base their midfield with Davids, Seedorf and sometimes de Boer playing as B2B midfielders ahead of him. At Milan though he was very much a defensive B2B — I'll quote Sacchi himself from the same Wilson's article, explaining the difference between a specialist holding midfielder like Makélélé and, well, Rijkaard:
"Today's football is about managing the characteristics of individuals," he said. "And that's why you see the proliferation of specialists. The individual has trumped the collective. But it's a sign of weakness. It's reactive, not pro-active."
Sacchi saw that most clearly during his time as sporting director of Real Madrid in 2004. "There was no project; it was about exploiting qualities," he said. "So, for example, we knew that Zidane, Raúl and Figo didn't track back, so we had to put a guy in front of the back four who would defend. But that's reactionary football. It doesn't multiply the players' qualities exponentially. Which actually is the point of tactics: to achieve this multiplier effect on the players' abilities. In my football, the regista – the playmaker – is whoever had the ball. But if you have [Claude] Makélélé, he can't do that. He doesn't have the ideas to do it, though of course, he's great at winning the ball. It's all about specialists."
Sacchi remains as committed to 4-4-2 now as he was when his AC Milan side won successive European Cups in 1989 and 1990. Neither of his central midfield pairing of Carlo Ancelotti and Frank Rijkaard were as prolific as Robson or Matthaus, but both were certainly capable of both destroying and creating.