Remember this isnt a thread asking 'who are the top 5 best players in the world'.... For me it has to be (in no particular order): Ibrahimovic Messi Berbatov Cassano KaKa For me Ronaldo,as good as he is,does not get the top 5 spot for most technically gifted players.A great player no doubt but when it comes to first touch ,close control ,sweet flicks ,overall ball control,intelligence and doing the basics excellently he isnt the best.Ronaldo is more of a skillful player imo.
messi,berbatov,iniesta,xavi,ronaldinho (watch him,hes still got amazing control and skill even if he is the forgotten man) not necessarily the best,just the 5 i think of immediately when i think of natural technical ability
Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, Cassano, Ibrahimovic. Glad you mentioned Cassano too If he had focused more throughout his career he could have been more well known... His pure technique is at Barcelona level.
I might be slightly biased here, but why has everyone gone for the normal boring selections? Why can't the most technically proficient footballer be a goalkeeper? If you think about it, what are the most important attributes of the players (Xavi, Scholes etc.) that are deemed to be the best technically? It's their positioning and movement, their ability to see things before the other players have even thought of doing it. That applies perfectly to the best goalkeepers as well. Their movement, it is the sign of a good keeper that he doesn't have to dive to make a save because his foot movement is top notch, their ability to judge what the opposition player is going to do, where the ball is going to go and making the move. I know it's a bit of a leftfield thought but heyho, might give you some food for thought(!) Haha!
Difficult to tell exactly how technical a goalkeeper is because they are never surrounded by opposition players the way Messi et al are.
yeah... Some Goalkeepers have good technique and touch, but I don't think many will be technically "gifted"
Okay. Think of it like this. One way of describing players like Berbatov and Xavi is how easy they make the game look. They do things and see things that others can't. You can apply that to any position because every position there is a technical criteria to fill. Centre back or full back or striker. So again, I ask, why do the most technically gifted players have to be attacking players? Defenders are just as technically gifted, but with a different criteria. Those defenders that are positionally perfect for example. You can compare technical ability by watching the players on the pitch, but you can do the same with any players and their opposite numbers. P.s. I am a defender, I play in goal so obviously I think differently! Haha!
Positioning doesn't really come into though... does it? Technically gifted = technique, rarely miscontrolling the ball, being able to control the ball under pressure or in tight spaces, with any part of their body, at any speed. There are some very good technical defenders though... Such as Pique, his technique is so good he could make a decent centre midfielder. Carvalho and Josip Simunic also. I could understand your point if this was a "best players in the world" thread.. because I'm like you - I think people tend to lean towards attacking players when defenders are just as special at their own jobs. We all talk about: "who's the best ? Pele, Maradona or Messi?" Well what about the great defenders? But there aren't many "technically gifted" defenders in my opinion. Ferdinand, for example, has good technique (control, passing) for a defender, but there's no way he'd be agile enough to dictate a game in midfield. He technique just isn't as good as say Xavi or Messi. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwZpsVQmYTU ^ A clip of Xavi in "full game" action. He doesn't miscontrol the ball at all. His touch is near enough perfect throughout, his passes are all weighed to perfection - and it's just natural to him, he makes it look easy. That's what I think of when I think "technically gifted". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3pZRuMaacI&feature=related ^The control of Zidane at 3:55 is another example. How many players would even think about controlling that with their chest down to their foot? Then to actually pull it off and keep balance? The average player would wait for that ball to drop to their foot. Only a handful of players could do anything like that.
You are completely misunderstanding what I'm trying to say. You can't judge defenders with midfielders, it's as pointless as saying who is better Vidic or Messi. You're judging the technical merits of defenders with attacking players attributes and that is wrong. Defenders have their own technical attributes, some are better than others. Some defenders throw last minute challenges in a desperate attempt to mask their own positional frailities. Some attributes are analagous across the board but needed for completely different reasons. Movement for both strikers and goalkeepers are vital, the ability to find space and anticipate. Let me give an example. You have central defender A that sees his full back being drawn out of position and sees an opposition player free where his full back would be so defender A simply drops back 5 yards to cover the space that could be exploited by the attacker. Using the same scenario, you may get defender B that rushes out to the free attacker and thus creating another pocket of space that he simply cannot defend. Now out of the two, you would say that defender A is technically the better defender. My gripe with this thread is that it should be named the most technically gifted attacking players because there are PLENTY of defenders that are technically superb in terms of defending and in my mind you get technical defenders that have immaculate positioning and ability to read the game in front of them and on the other hand you have other defenders that only see the ball coming to them and deal with it. I'm not saying you don't need both types but technical attributes are analagous across all types of footballers. And also, IMO, technical ability is more than just being able to control and pass the ball well. Take Scholes for example. Generally regarded as the finest technical player that England have had for a generation, but controlling the ball and passing are just a fraction of Scholes's game. You have to consider his movement and his vision. The game is much more than mere physicalities. The best players like Zidane and Scholes and Xavi of this generation have amazing footballing brains. This is so vastly underrated, it's almost as if they out thought them, it was check and mate when they threaded in a perfect through ball. A common denominator is that they play with their heads rather than from emotion. Well, apart from when Scholes makes a sliding tackle!
