Football News

The fine art of dribbling is said to be on the verge of extinction. The tactical obsession and the preference for waiting for the opponent's failure instead of provoking it has taken away a lot from creativity. But in Spain, one of the places where this natural talent is most missed, there are still bastions that resist slates and contemplation. Although they are not the only ones, Vinicius and Takefusa Kubo, who coincided in several pre-seasons at Madrid, are two of them. On Friday, while waiting to find out if they are both in the starting line-up, they promise to showcase their best work at Anoeta.

The Real Madrid striker is the player in Spanish football who averages the most successful dribbles, with 5.74 per 90 minutes. This makes him 4th in the 5 big European leagues. This data covers both domestic matches and European competition matches. 

Immediately ahead of Vinicius is Crystal Palace's Michael Olise with 5.94 in third place. The difference between him and 2nd is slightly bigger. Ousmane Dembele averages 6.51 successful dribbles per 90'. The PSG Frenchman, despite his good figures, is a long way behind the leader. Jeremy Doku, as he showed recently against Real Madrid in the minutes he had, has dribbling as his greatest footballing virtue. Nobody does it better than Manchester City's Belgian at least, according to BeSoccer Pro data. He is at the top of this ranking with 8.85 successful attempts per game.

Takefusa Kubo, for his part, is two places away from breaking into the top 10, although he only has one less dribble than Vinicius if only La Liga data is taken (116 to 115). Including the Champions League, the Japanese Real Sociedad player's average is 5.08 per 90 minutes, 2 tenths of a second behind Rafael Leao

Michael Olise Rafael Leao Jeremy Doku Takefusa Kubo