Messi's numbers are insane.
Greatest Dribbler of All Time
- Thread starter Moby
- Start date
Barnes is my favorite player and he deserves his place in this conversation for sure, the best dribbler in English football during late 80s.
Joaquin's numbers are really impressive given the data will be mostly from the later end of his career and will not include his prime years.
the zoomers won't know it, but the best dribbler of all time is Chatzipanayis.
The man dribbled past a defender and turn around to dribble them again, just because. And don't discount him because he played in Greece. He was legitimately one of the top talents of his era, just unlucky.
The man dribbled past a defender and turn around to dribble them again, just because. And don't discount him because he played in Greece. He was legitimately one of the top talents of his era, just unlucky.
I couldn’t agree more.
And here's video evidence of my ridiculous claims
Bring me the era of Maverick number 10's back. Yes todays football is probably more efficient and driven by stats but for just the joy of watching there isn't much to beat that style of dribbling.
That Robben v Ribery argument is an interesting one and brings up the different styles. If I wanted someone to get isolated one v one and beat a defender to create a shooting or goal creation chance I might take Robben but Ribery would have been better for me at simply keeping the ball under high pressure with multiple defenders on him.
I love dribblers who are direct and penetrative, create such a threat and danger. Others excel at keeping the ball, the very best have both.
Came across a video of Adel Taarabt on youtube, that guy was ridiculous, anyone knows what's he up to now a days?
The answer to this question is obviously Messi, acceleration, pace, touch, feints, his dribbling had everything, and apart from all of this, he rarely dribbled pointlessly, kept progressing the ball.
I'm a big fan of Iniesta's dribbling too, haven't seen many players wrong foot defenders with minimum effort and such ease.
Dinho is obviously up there, you couldn't take your eye of the game when he has the ball, and at the end of the day, football is entertainment, there hasn't been a bigger entertainer than him.
Neymar is another one who is ridiculously good.
Interesting to read about Ribery and Robben, Ribery has better numbers, but I always thought Robben was the better dribbler.
Special shout out to Abu Diaby, very few central midfielders can dribble like that.
The answer to this question is obviously Messi, acceleration, pace, touch, feints, his dribbling had everything, and apart from all of this, he rarely dribbled pointlessly, kept progressing the ball.
I'm a big fan of Iniesta's dribbling too, haven't seen many players wrong foot defenders with minimum effort and such ease.
Dinho is obviously up there, you couldn't take your eye of the game when he has the ball, and at the end of the day, football is entertainment, there hasn't been a bigger entertainer than him.
Neymar is another one who is ridiculously good.
Interesting to read about Ribery and Robben, Ribery has better numbers, but I always thought Robben was the better dribbler.
Special shout out to Abu Diaby, very few central midfielders can dribble like that.
I haven't seen his name mentioned after a search so just adding David Ginola's name to the mix.
He also played for USSR Olympic team too. His things would have changed , if he had decided to play with USSR.
Presumably someone already mentioned Jesse Lingard?
I love it on those old videos with the heavy balls and mud pitches, when players absolutely leather a 10 yard pass or short cross
Going of players i've seen i'd go for:
CM - Jay Jay Okocha, Zidane and Iniesta
RW - Messi, Robben and Ben Arfa
LW - Ronaldinho, Neymar, Ribery and Denilson
ST - Original Ronaldo
CM - Jay Jay Okocha, Zidane and Iniesta
RW - Messi, Robben and Ben Arfa
LW - Ronaldinho, Neymar, Ribery and Denilson
ST - Original Ronaldo
Had no idea who this guy was but he was clearly a fecking genius. That video is fire.
Also I don't know if someone's mentioned "Jinky" Jimmy Johnstone yet, but he's got to be up there for footballers from previous eras. I first heard of him reading the obituaries in British media when he died some years ago and have binged a lot of what's available of his play on Youtube. His first thought when he got the ball anywhere on the pitch was to beat the first man and take him out of the equation and he fairly often did. He seems to be acknowledged as Celtic's greatest ever player.
Last edited:
Great video of someone I’d never heard of before. Not only great skills but a lot of end product as well. No point beating 3 people if you don’t find an accurate pass or finish at the end.
Shaun Goater
My man out here setting up chances for fun and team mates missing them all.
Seriously though you can see this guy was clearly incredibly gifted. How come he never played at higher levels?
Last edited:
+1
He claims that his club Iraklis somehow signed him for an eternal contract and never let him go.
Which is actually true. The contracts that footballers in Greece had back in the day had ridiculous terms. They also played for peanuts.
Fun fact: The Panathinaikos team that reached the Champions League final in 1971 was actually semi-professional. The players wages were so low that pretty much all of them had regular jobs.
Unlucky in football maybe, but his decision to go to Greece when he did might have saved his life. Most of the team he played for in the Soviet Union ( Pakhtakor Tashkent) were killed in a in a mid-air collision just a few years later. Of course he could have moved on to a bigger Soviet club by then, but the other highly regarded players in that squad - Vladimir Federov and Mikhail An - had stayed loyal to the club and died.
Maradona is no. 1 by far.
Messi played in a era where he was protected by refs. Put him in Maradona's era and he's useless, he gets carried out of the field on a stretcher.
Another reason to be grateful for the EU, couldn’t get away with that anymore.
How would that even work?
Coached by the all time great puskas.
What an incredible story it would have been had they beaten ajax.
Scholes. Especially when his daughter has her socks off.
They played very entertain football in my eyes, their midfielders especially Kamaras and Domazos were impressed by a lot of people including me. Tbh, they gave some troubles to Ajax in final 1971. Considering that they were semi-professional, they did the job superbly.
Bosman was not a thing back then. His team, Iraklis, had a clause that enabled them to renew his contract without his consent, so they kept renewing it and refused all offers to sell him, even an offer of about the equivalent of 1,5 million euros, which would be a top 10 fee of all time back then.
True, that team was full of leaders and great personalities, and of course they had a great manager in Ferenc Puskas.
As @Bobski mentioned, that era of european football really made talented players shine by giving them positional freedom. Panathinaikos had 3-4 players of this calibre in that team.
Shame, he deserved to take a step up.
Thanks for bringing him to my attention, was always curious about that generation.
I like exploring footballers of older generations you don't hear about anymore.
Another great dribbler, that you never see mentioned anymore was a german fella named Gunter Netzer, he was basically the blueprint for midfielders like Zidane and Laudrup. He really nailed playing with his back turned to the opponent, and holding the ball under pressure and opening the flanks with his passes.
He won a few titles in his prime and made it to Real Madrid in the mid 70s, but most people don't even know him.
I remember him, he was world class but unfortunately overshadowed by the achievements of the great bayern cohort.
Him not taking part(a n active one) in their world cup campaign didn't help his cause either.
Bruno Conti was known as a great dribbler as well. And a honourable mention to the The Waving Corn-Cob:
Lennart "Nacka" Skoglund ● The Best Dribbler Ever ►The Waving Corn-Cob◄ - YouTube
Lennart "Nacka" Skoglund ● The Best Dribbler Ever ►The Waving Corn-Cob◄ - YouTube
You make some interesting points, but unless you get past your opponent, you're not actually a great dribbler IMO.
Almost any decent player can do a feint or a dummy in order to give himself space to get a pass or a cross, that's not the same as dribbling.
Speed certainly is a huge asset for a dibbler, but it's not necessarily top speed, but rather acceleration.
There have been players that don't possess great speed (some were quite slow IMO), yet they were still good dribblers. I'm talking about players like Riquelme and Zidane. However, lack of speed means they rarely can beat more than 1 opponent with their dribbling, 2 at best.
Well, I would - again - say that it's about gaining a crucial advantage more than about (necessarily) moving past an opponent.
I would also say that gaining that advantage in a tight situation - and you could add here the premise of being up against a (very) good/aggressive defender - isn't something any half decent player is capable of at the highest level.
In the case of the very best dribblers the distinction is arguably a bit pointless - because I can't think of a truly great dribbler who was (relatively) poor at beating his man (but nevertheless great at gaining an advantage).
If I remember correctly Gascoigne was also pretty good at it.
Jesus, Messi really is living rent free in your head, isn't he?
He's the second most overrated player of all time, after Zidane.
You have no clue about football then
On the "carried out on a stretcher" point - that's precisely the sort of thing which doesn't make any sense when comparing players from different eras.
It's the exact same flaw people are guilty of when they point out the - obvious - fact that the general pace in a game of professional football is much higher today than it was during Whoever's peak (fifty, thirty or even fifteen years ago).
There's no obvious reason why Messi - given his core qualities - wouldn't have adapted to the football world of the 1980s. He isn't particularly injury prone, for one thing. Sure, defenders would've kicked the shit out of him - just like they did with Maradona - but why wouldn't he have handled that (on the whole), just like Maradona did?
The fact that attackers are - clearly - much more protected these days has no bearing on the hypothetical scenario in which Messi is born around 1960 and has to play against the likes of Claudio Gentile.
The "mentality" argument is actually more convincing if you want to downplay Messi (compared to Maradona): the fact that he hasn't actually genuinely stepped up to take charge and shine in an environment where he is not surrounded by an undoubted top, top selection of team mates, etc.