Fobal
Full Member
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2023
- Messages
- 412
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- Liverpool
He never was an off the charts dribbler.I think with his starting point(187/85) he was as creative and good at dribbling as they come. His size automatically makes it impossible to be a Messi/Neymar/type, but when he competes against other 185cm + guys he is the only one at that level. Even though we don't have weight/height classes in football, very different bodies still have different limitations of course.
I feel that players like Kempes, Gullit, Ibra, R9 to name some, were better or at least on pair big dribblers and even slightly tall fellas like Robben too...that doesn't mean better goalscorers, faster, etc.
He is a bit stiff in his dribbling, he never kind of knew were he would end if he tried taking on many far from the rivals area.
Yet when he was closer to the area, when he had the goal as aim, there he made his best plays, leaving in the dust a couple of fellas or at least one and blast it on the net or finishing with finesse. But at the end of the day there is a large list of players from any height that were better than him in such regard.
Nonetheless, let's be clear that going in a straight line at full speed, when nobody can grab you, it's ALSO dribbling, it requires to take advantage of more space, of great timing and it's dribbling anyway and in such scenarios, he was fantastic with many of those runs far from the rival's net.
PD: the most annoying thing regarding this whole CR dribbling thing are those mixed bag vids trying to make him an off the charts dribbler. Those tend to have 45 plays were he stays in the same place, pulling stepovers with his leg over a metre above the ball while ending with an unncesary backheel and not advancing two metres.
In the middle of such thing, there are some fantastic slaloms, or specially plays like the ones I've mentioned in the first paragraph, but the way they fill his vids with the type of plays mentioned here, it makes those vids kind of annoying at some point.
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