Garrincha his strength was his ability to change direction at whim. No one was better in accelerating away in an arc - if you know what I mean. Cruijff is often underrated because he was insanely fast. But someone at soccerpulse once made a nice folder on mediafire with close space dribbling by cruijff, when he did not use his acceleration and speed (he couldn't use it). Some very nice pieces of quick foot speed and ball-control. There you saw his ability. But his speed often hided it. But Best was the Best at his prime, as admitted by Cruijff himself.
So me more than 2,3 good articles or respected sources saying Maradona and Messi as best dribblers and your point maybe valid I ONLY SHOWED the links since you (or someone else) asked for it - NOT that I based on them to conclude Garrincha is the best dribbler as he is. Look at Wiki link: Garrincha was "labeled as best dribbler", but NOT Maradona, nor Best, or .... Messi (ahem). You should WONDER why Garrincha?
The likes of Maradona, Schiaffino, Best, Baggio, Matthews and now Messi have been also considered the best dribbler of all times. I can't be bothered to look it up, but are you saying that no one has ever considered Maradona a greater dribbler than Garrincha?
Of course there would be "someone" or some (minority) had thought so. But I had yet to see any good source that say so officially - Like i posted even the British people (very conservative) had put Garrincha in TOP3 best dribblers with Best and Mathews, but they did say Garrincha was mostly regarded as "best dribbler" Of course most Argentina fans would think Maradona was better, but not to the PROS
Thats exactly what you did in defense of Garricha, posting some british dude's opinion. How do you conclude from an article that the opinion of the author is that of all "British people" and other articles are just a minority?
LOL, exactly what I was going to reply. And if Garrincha is a greater dribbler than Maradona, how come he never scored a goal like Diego's second against England or Belgium?
Garrincha v. "M10"??: [Doesn't this really just boil down to Garrincha & "M10" were dribbling/taking on & beating opposition players wthe ball @ their feet in different parts of the pitch?]
Re: Garrincha v. "M10"??: It's a good question Roy. In general we are talking of TOP10 greatest dribblers with Garrincha, M10, Pele, Mathews, Best, Rivelino, Cruijff, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, and many others like Zico, Baggio, and ... lately Messi as well It's hard to FINALIZE whois BEST. The ones who "impressed" me were Garrincha, Maradona, Pele, Best, Cruijjf, Ronaldo for "effectiveness" and others are nice to watch were Rivelino, Ronaldinho ... I had not watched much of Mathews - if you can help with something? safely, I would say no others had (or could have) dribbled passing by 8,9 men on pitch, friendly or small competition like Garricnha did in his days. So if I have to point one out of the group (above) Garrincha would be #1, and then M10 #2 yes .. G.Best would be surely in #3 to #5 or so ...
Dribbling is totally subjective and you have many styles of dribbling I think. I'm not sure about how to categorize it but there is a lot between the Beckenbauer/Van Basten 'effortless/graceful' style of dribbling and the high-frequency style of Messi. I think however that George Best was better than Garrincha, Cruijff (admitted by himself), Maradona, Messi, Ronaldo and Zico. Ronaldinho was imo better than Ronaldo and Messi. Baggio is often underrated. Baggio had not an insane acceleration or top speed but nevertheless a very good ball control. But, the greats are not necessarily the best! Some pundits in Holland have for example the opinion that the likes of Wilkes, Moulijn and even Van Basten were in terms of dribbling alone superior to Cruijff. Also the 70-73 Van Hanegem was sometimes dubbed as the 'best close dribbler of the league' at that time. And I guess you can make for any country such a list. The greats are not necessarily the best in every department.
Another great one who we can't also judge because of lack of footage is Sindelar. He comes up in discussions about best dribbler of all time.
I would also place in the top 11-20 Nicolae Dobrin and Jimmy Johnstone. Figo and Giggs in their prime could claim a place in the all time 20 as well IMO.
Maradona is a legend, no doubt about it, though of the current crop out there, you have to hand it to Messi.
Maradona - Skillful and good vision Ronaldo 9 - Speed/Strength to run thru defence. Messi - Very close ball control, able to change direction quick Neymar - Tricky, skillful and able to change direction quick like Messi. I think pre injured Ronaldo was better than all of them until he got injured, and Neymar is still young but you got to admit he is up there in dribbling, all he needs to do is put on some weight. Look at the goal Neymar scored against Internacional, not many players can do that.
Neymar might be tricky, but Ronaldo was the king of tricks. All those tricks that Ronaldinho showed at Barca and the ones that Neymar do nowadays, Ronaldo did them before and did them better. For example, Ronaldinho, Neymar etc. do the elastico, but they do it from a static position. Ronaldo is the only player who could pull off an elastico while running at top speed. And that is Zidane's observation (not just mine).