Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima: A Tribute

When Ronaldo retires we will remember his incredible pace and his buck-toothed smile; his slalom runs through midfield; the acceleration that left defenders for dead; the retreat, deep into midfield and then the assault on goal; the stutter step that allowed him to change direction; the dribbling that we hadn’t seen since Garrincha and Maradona; his clinical finishing with either the left foot or the right; the ability to carve out that extra yard of space when surrounded by two or three defenders; the buzz in the mid-1990s about this player from Cruzeiro who had arrived in Europe and was scoring a goal a game; the boldness of his promise to break Just Fontaine’s record on his own soil; his calmness in front of the penalty spot; his friendship with Romario; his instinctive leadership on the field; his enduring respect for his boyhood idol Zico; his record of scoring in every final before World Cup 1998; his goal in the final of the 1997 Copa America against Bolivia in La Paz; his goals for Inter Milan against Spartak Moscow in the UEFA Cup when Inter was down, away from home, on a pitch that resembled sand; his breathtaking performance against Holland in World Cup 1998; his goals in the World Cup 2002 final against Germany after heart wrenching injuries; his tears in his retirement press conference; his love of Corinthians and the passion of their fans; the way he redefined the number 9 jersey; his joy for the game; the way he made the beautiful game beautiful again.

Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima, otherwise known as Ronaldo of Corinthians: you changed the sport of football forever. You were the greatest pure striker of all time. We will miss you.

Flashback: Garrincha and the lost art of dribbling. Brazil v. Soviet Union, World Cup 1958

Lionel Messi may be the greatest dribbler in the modern game, but his shifts of pace and effortless sidestepping of opponents should perhaps more aptly be termed gliding rather than dribbling. Dribbling refers to an array of tricks for outmaneuvering an opposing player that include zig-zags in ball direction, rapid changes in the ball's point of contact with the foot, step-over moves, exceptional ball control and a passion for entertaining fans. Alongside Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo qualifies as an effective dribbler as does Santos's Neymar. That said, given the retirement of Ronaldo of Corinthians, and the sunset over the career of Ronaldinho and Rivaldo, dribbling is rapidly becoming a lost art. Spain's pre-eminence in modern football was built on a passing game as opposed to dribbling skill. Brazil constitutes the leading contemporary candidate to resurrect the art of dribbling owing to a long dribbling tradition epitomized by Garrincha in the 1950s and 1960s and members of the great World Cup team of 1970 such as Clodoaldo and Rivelino.

In his book Garrincha: The Triumph and Tragedy of Brazil's Forgotten Footballing Hero, Ruy Castro helps us recall the magic of Garrincha and the lost art of dribbling in a moving excerpt about Brazil's clash with the Soviet Union in the 1958 World Cup. At the time, the Soviet Union was feared because of their legendary fitness and scientific approach to both training and tactical deployment on the field. Brazil fitness trainer Paulo Amaral called up Garrincha to the first team because he knew only Garrincha could run the Soviets in circles and enable Brazil to take the lead in scoring. True to Amaral's instincts, Garrincha shocked the Soviet defenders with his looping runs that tied them up in knots in the opening seconds of the match. Within three minutes, Vava scored for Brazil. Castro describes Garrincha's effect on the Soviets as follows:

"And there were still 87 minutes to go. Had it gone on that way for the rest of the game the Soviets would have been looking at a season in Siberia. Their proud "scientific" football had never before been so demoralised, and by the most improbable source: a poor Brazilian peasant -- dark-skinned, small as a bird, cock-eyed and with ridiculously crooked legs. Garrincha was a perfect example of anti-science; he was anti-Sputnik, anti-electronic brain, Kessarev, Krijveski, Voinov, Tsarev and especially Kuznetzov were all taken to the cleaners by the little man at some point during the game, either one at a time or in pairs or threes, or sometimes even one after another.

At the start of the game, after those ferocious opening three minutes, the Soviets still thought their problem was with marking, and they began to fight among themselves. But if they did tighten up it wasn't noticeable because Garrincha continued to run rings round them. Then the Soviets resorted to trying to bring him down, largely unsuccessfully. In one memorable incident, after leaving a defender on the ground Garrincha put his foot on the ball and with his back to the player offered his hand to help him up. He lifted the player up and then started running again as it were the most natural thing in the world.

Brazil would score just once more, when Vava doubled his tally 31 minutes into the second half. But it felt like the biggest hammering in World Cup history. At no time did the Soviets threaten to score; Gilmar had only one save to make. It was a different story at the other end, where only Yashin's brilliance had helped avoid a catastroph. Brazil mounted 36 attacks, 18 of which were dangerous, and they hit the woodwork twice. Garrincha had arrived, and not just for those watching live but also for those listening in at home. From that day on there were no more Botafogo fans, Fluminense fans, Flamengo fans, Corinthians fans or Gremio fans. Everyone was now a Garrincha fan, even when he played against their own team.

In the dressing room after the game, Garrincha had no ideas who had been marking him. And why would he? He hadn't been marked by one man but by many, and all their names ended in ev or ov. What did he care? The only thing he said, which summed up his performance perfectly, was, "I was hungry for the ball today."

(Castro, 122-123)

Here, Garrincha leaves a Soviet defender for dead on the Swedish turf before returning to extend a hand to help him up and darting forward toward goal once again. Garrincha had been left out of the earlier group matches against Austria and England, but was included in the match against the Soviet Union to counteract their alleged ability to run for 180 minutes. The Soviets were favorites to win the 1958 World Cup in the heyday of the Cold War, having won Olympic gold in Melbourne in 1956 and launched Sputnik in 1957. But out of the blue, Garrincha's passion and playfulness with the ball enabled Brazil to defeat the Soviets and march towards its first ever World Cup championship.

The Effortlessness of Lionel Messi

He is the greatest football player since Kaka and Ronaldinho. At the tender age of 23, he has yet to make his mark in a World Cup for Argentina, but if form holds, he is destined to earn career achievement comparisons with Maradona, Brazilian ace Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and Pele. He has already won the FIFA Player of Year Award and is trailblazing Barcelona's campaign for the 2010-2011 La Liga title against Jose Mourinho's Real Madrid and Cristiano Ronaldo. His name is Lionel Messi and he is in the midst of redefining the meaning of footballing greatness.

In early adolescence, Messi struggled with a medical condition related to a growth deficiency that required nightly injections of a growth hormone. Unable to afford the treatment in Argentina, his family accepted an offer from Barcelona to pay for Messi's medical bills as part of his induction into Barca's youth team and moved from their home in Rosario, Argentina to Spain in 2000. Messi shone as a youth player for Barcelona and since then, has accompanied the team on its road to La Liga titles in 2004-2005, 2005-2006, 2008-2009 and 2009-2010. He finished the 2009-2010 year with 34 La Liga goals in 35 appearances for Barcelona on their way to the title as he picked up awards for the Balloon d’Or and the FIFA World Player of the Year award in the same season. Messi shone at the World Cup in South Africa in 2010 but failed to score, though he recently scored for the first time against arch-rivals Brazil with a brilliant injury time goal to sink Brazil and hand Mano Menezes his first loss since taking charge of the Brazilian national football team.

Fans and pundits compare him most frequently with Diego Maradona because of their prodigious dribbling skills, diminutive stature, low center of gravity and shared Argentine heritage. Maradona himself has called Messi his "successor" on more than one occasion, though one could be forgiven for wondering whether Maradona has reconciled himself to Messi's greatness given the former's inability to realize Messi's powers at the World Cup 2010 or even in South American World Cup qualifying. Regardless of whether there exists an unspoken rivalry or jealousy on Maradona's part about Lionel Messi, a closer look at the two players reveals a number of differences at the level of technique, skill and overall style.

Effortlessly, Messi glides past one defender and then another, weaving his way through defenses by means of absurdly quick changes of direction that leave defenders in the box stunned by the speed of his change of pace. Feigning a movement in one direction and then heading in another in a flash, he leaves defenders awestruck as he dashes by them on his way toward goal. His dribbling skills rank with Maradona, Garrincha, Ronaldo and Ronaldinho save for the naturalness of his movement, and the way he blows by players as if the field were a chess game where the pawns on the opposing side offer no resistance. And in all this, there is a seeming lack of exertion on Messi's part as he plots his path toward goal through a throng of defenders. Whereas Brazilian ace Ronaldo and Maradona muscled their way past defenders like bulls with speed and supreme ball control skills, Messi draws on his deep positional awareness to find his teammates and the ball and the back of the net. True to his look as a band groupie or a Harry Potter-like, contemplative nerd, his power is cerebral and based on a keen tactical awareness of the positions of his teammates and the opposition. And in keeping with his South American heritage, the other component of Messi's magic derives from his dribbling abilities and clinical finishing power. The ball stays glued to his laces until he unloads it onto his left foot and dispatches a shot with clinical precision that rarely misses the target. Simply put, Lionel Messi is the best finisher in the game today, playing at a league above even the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Didier Drogba and Luis Fabiano.

He scores 3 and 4 goals per match with a frequency rarely performed by strikers such as Romario, Ronaldo, Raul and Gabriel Batistuta, all of whom were accustomed to braces but far less frequently to hat-tricks and beyond. On March 10, 2007, Messi scored a hat-trick in the El Clasico match between Real Madrid and Barcelona. In 2009, he repeated the feat with a hat-trick against Atletico Madrid. On April 7, 2010, Messi single handedly destroyed Arsenal by scoring 4 goals in a 4-1 rout of the Gunners. The 2010-2011season has witnessed two Messi hat-tricks already, one against Sevilla in a 4-0 victory on August 21, 2010 and another against Almeira in an 8-0 Barcelona victory on November 20, 2010.

Messi's most touted goal so far was against Getafe on April 18, 2007, where he defeated five Getafe players plus the goalkeeper in a goal that drew widespread comparisons with Diego Maradona's second goal against England in the World Cup of 1986. But he has scored brilliant goals since then against more experienced and tactically savvy defenses such as those of Valencia, Zaragoza, Real Madrid, Arsenal and most recently, Brazil, that have ironically drawn less media attention than the goal against Getafe because of the sheer effortlessness of his accomplishment in putting the ball in the back of the net. Messi's effortlessness conceals his raw talent and uncanny positional awareness of how to navigate through mazes of defenders and score with comparative ease. Ironically, however, the world would do well to watch the spectacle of his career unfold with baited breath since—beneath his modesty, shyness and music groupie-like appearance—we are witnessing one of the greatest football players of all time soar toward the peak of his career. The next test of Messi's greatness will be how he handles Jose Mourinho and Cristiano Ronaldo at this season's first El Clasico on November 29. Given how their flagship striker is in the hottest of form having scored in 9 straight Barcelona games, Barca fans could be forgiven for expecting Messi to shred Real Madrid's defense into tatters at the Nou Camp on Monday.