Ranking the 11 Best Dribblers in Football History

Highlights

• Some of the most exciting players in football history have built their reputations on incredible dribbling ability.

• Brazil has produced a glut of legendarily skilful players over the years.

• Lionel Messi is the best dribbler of his generation but has been outstripped by some greats from the past.

When football was first popularised on the playing fields of English public schools in the second half of the 20th century, dribbling was the most important skill. At a time when passing was practically considered to be an act of cowardice, mastery of the ball was paramount.

The game has evolved over the subsequent decades, but those players who can find their way through a thicket of bodies, appealing to the joyful style conducted in playgrounds in each corner of the globe, have always inspired widespread acclaim. The best goalscorers win games, the greatest defenders win titles, but the ultimate weavers win hearts and minds.

Cult heroes and Ballon d'Or winners, serial champions and mercurial mavericks. The roll call of the game's best dribblers of all time is wonderfully varied.

Ranking Factors

• Stats - Dribbles attempted and completed at a high success rate are the most important numbers to watch out for.

• Reputation - Alongside detailed statistics, which aren't always available in bygone eras, the glowing accounts of fellow players, managers and observers are considered.

• Competition - Finding a way past the best defenders in the world at the highest level is more impressive.

• Longevity - Only the best have been able to build a repertoire of skills big enough to continuously bamboozle.

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11 John Barnes

1980-1999

Growing up with a father shaped by an adult life in the Jamaican army, John Barnes prided himself on his discipline. Even when performing the seemingly spontaneous act of deceiving an opponent, the former Liverpool winger adopted an approach laced with military precision, making every jink and shimmy in direct response to the body position of his opponent.

The calculating weaver's most famous goal came after a nut-and-bolt deconstruction of Brazil's backline during a friendly in 1984. Barnes danced between six yellow shirts before throwing in one more feint to leave goalkeeper Roberto Costa on his backside. The Liverpool legend is always quick to quell any hyperbole inspired by his dynamic dribble, once even claiming that he scored a better goal for Watford against Rotherham.

10 Eden Hazard

1964-1984

In the decade between Eden Hazard's arrival at Chelsea in 2012 and his retirement from football after an underwhelming move to Real Madrid, the Belgian maestro completed exactly 999 take-ons, per Opta. Only Lionel Messi broke the four-digit barrier, but Hazard had a higher success rate when sizing up an opposition full-back.

Alongside countless hours spent in the back garden with his brothers - all of whom also became professional footballers - Hazard's physical makeup gave him a natural edge. Standing at 5ft 7in and 76kg of pure muscle in his prime, the Belgian's low centre of gravity allowed him to get underneath taller opponents and pivot around them. As former Manchester City midfielder, Yaya Toure, has repeatedly pointed out, Hazard's large rear end was also highly influential.

When the ball arrives at Hazard, he can already sense the opponent coming towards him, so he waits until the last moment and uses his bum to block them. It pushes the opponent away - almost like a punch - and then, when he has opened up that space between him and the defender, he will power away and start the attack.

9 Neymar

2009-Present

Neymar has been called many things throughout his career. Plenty are not suitable for print, but Robinho, another enigmatic product of Santos' youth team, gave the best appraisal when he described his compatriot as "a synonym for showtime".

The nature of that performance could vary violently, but at his best, Neymar was a joy to watch. In an era when the sport has drifted away from individual bursts of skill to collective discipline at the highest level, the Brazilian would punctuate every contest with a flurry of nutmegs or flick the ball over an opponent's head for the sake of the spectacle. It also brought results. The continental champion of club football in Europe and South America surpassed the great Pele as Brazil's all-time leading scorer.

8 Omar Sivori

1954-1969

Omar Sivori was an easy player to dislike. Spiky and surly, the Argentine winger's nickname of 'El Cabezon' - the Big Head - was well deserved. Sivori was also known as 'El Gran Zurdo' - the Great Left-Footer - which also proved to be pretty accurate.

A key figure in the all-conquering Juventus side of the 1950s and '60s, Sivori could do anything with the ball, as long as it was on his left foot. The naturalised Italy international took great joy in humiliating his opponents, prodding the ball between an endless set of open legs. Juve's owner Gianni Agnelli rightly called him "a bad habit".

For all the division that his style created, the lasting impression of Sivori was universal admiration. Upon his death in 2005, the biggest sports paper in Italy led with the headline: "Goodbye, genius."

7 Sir Stanley Matthews

1932-1965

When an excitable journalist asked Stanley Matthews to demonstrate his signature body swerve, the wriggling winger suppressed a wry smile before replying: "I'm sorry, sir, but I can't do it in cold blood." Matthews established himself as the first icon of English football not through a mountain of goals - he only scored more than 10 in one of his 29 league seasons - but based largely on his weaving ability.

The so-called 'Wizard of the Dribble' won his solitary major club honour in 1953, leading Blackpool to a 4-3 victory in the FA Cup final over Bolton. Stan Mortensen scored a hat-trick for the Tangerines that day, but the game was forever known as the 'Matthews Final', such was the overriding appeal of his wing play. Pele spoke for many when he hailed Matthews as "the man who taught us how football should be played".

6 Ronaldinho

1998-2015

Ronaldinho's bewildering set of skills was not gifted at birth but honed by hours spent playing in the streets with children, men and - more often than not - his pet Bombom, "a mutt, a real Brazilian dog". It proved perfect practice, as Ronaldinho once explained: "When you are playing in Europe, a few defenders will remind you of Bombom."

The former Barcelona icon is held up as the embodiment of Brazilian flair but grew up in Rio Grande do Sul, a region where "the emphasis is on physical play" as the former national team coach, Luiz Felipe Scolari, would say. One of Ronaldinho's first coaches infamously told him: "You'll never in your life make it as a footballer," playing the way he did. Fortunately, he didn't listen.

5 Johan Cruyff

1964-1984

Johan Cruyff had complete control over the ball, cultivating his unrivalled skill on the uneven cobbles of Amsterdam's streets, but never set out to humiliate his opponents. The Dutch icon prided himself on only performing a nutmeg if it presented the quickest route to goal.

Even some of those who were unintentionally embarrassed took it in good spirits. Sweden's Jan Olsson was the first player subjected to what became known as the 'Cruyff turn', helplessly swatting at thin air as the Netherlands captain skipped past him in an orange blur during the 1974 World Cup. "I loved everything about this moment," Olsson recalled.

In the same game that he performed his signature spin, Cruyff completed 12 dribbles. Only two players in the history of the World Cup have ever weaved beyond more players in a single game on the biggest stage football has to offer.

4 George Best

1963-1984

Paddy Crerand, George Best's long-serving Manchester United teammate, famously described the effect he had on defenders as leaving them with "twisted blood". During a career which brought him domestic and European glory individually and collectively before the age of 22, the Northern Irishman was responsible for countless knotted veins. The brightest burst of Best's career came under the fatherly figure of Sir Matt Busby, who once gushed: "He was able to use either foot - sometimes he seemed to have six."

No one was spared from Best's attacks. The mischievous winger infamously nutmegged Johan Cruyff and Johan Neeksens in the same game for Northern Ireland against the Netherlands in 1976. "That was Bestie," Sammy McIlroy grinned when reflecting upon just one example of his compatriot's impish brilliance.

3 Lionel Messi

2003-Present

Lionel Messi has evolved his game over the years. After starting out as an unrelenting slalom specialist - a 20-year-old Messi completed an average of 8.4 dribbles per game, more than any other player on record in StatsBomb's database - the Argentine maestro dialled down his darts. Pep Guardiola was pivotal in this move towards greater efficiency and hailed Messi as "a player who plays with zero adornments". "I've never seen a stepover from him, or a [pointless] flick," the Catalan gushed, "he is the ultimate in effectiveness."

Jose Mourinho once said: "When Messi is one-on-one, you are dead." The former Bayern Munich defender, Jerome Boateng, who was famously flattened by the Argentine's trademark body feint during the 2015 Champions League semi-final, agreed. "I would say defending Messi one-on-one is not possible." Barcelona icon Hristo Stoichkov wonderfully captured the great man's brilliance when he laughed: "Once they said they can only stop me with a pistol, but today you need a machine gun to stop him."

2 Diego Maradona

1976-1997

One of the many famous images of Diego Maradona depicts six Belgian players charging in unison towards the Argentine icon during the semi-finals of the 1986 World Cup. That was the kind of attention that one of the greatest players of all time demanded when he had the ball at his feet. Maradona is the only player in recorded World Cup history to have been fouled more than 50 times in a single summer - and it happened twice, in 1986 and 1990, per Opta.

Only the best defenders managed to even get close enough to foul him. During the 1986 World Cup, the fleet-footed forward completed a staggering 53 dribbles - for comparison, only one team (France) managed more between them at the 2022 World Cup.

The most famous of these weaving runs came before Maradona's second goal in the iconic quarter-final victory over England when he travelled 51 metres with the ball before tucking it under Peter Shilton. Argentina's commentator, Victor Hugo Morales, captured the alien ability of his nation's number 10. "Cosmic kite!" Morales exclaimed between sobs. "What planet are you from?"

1 Garrincha

1951-1972

It was clear that Manuel Francisco dos Santos was unique from birth. Born into the poverty of Pau Grande, the young Brazilian who would come to be known as 'Garrincha' had a pair of bent legs, gently curving the same way like two right-hand brackets. This orthopaedic anomaly would be regularly cited as a key factor behind his ability to continually bamboozle opponents, sending them toppling with a stride that should theoretically have left him in a knotted heap.

Like a poet touched by an angel, like a composer following a melody that fell from the sky, like a dancer hooked to a rhythm, Garrincha plays football by pure inspiration and magic; unsuffering, unreserved and unplanned.

Garrincha's joyful style inspired reams of poetry and weighty tomes full of legendary tales. The two-time World Cup winner was arguably more popular in Brazil than his illustrious contemporary, Pele, because of his unflinching commitment to entertaining the crowd.

It's a shame that statistical providers such as Opta were not around to quantify Garrincha's creativity. But there is an abundance of anecdotal evidence which highlights how frequently the Brazilian raided forward. One referee threatened to send Garrincha off after tormenting the same hapless defender all afternoon and even his manager tried to get him to dribble less. He quickly gave up.