5 of the best footballers and their one glaring weakness

To err, they say, is human. But what if you err so much that it becomes actually a habit rather than a silly mistake? That’s what I’d like to call weakness. When someone repeatedly fails at something, it can be said that it is her/his weakness.

I, for example, fail at life, so living is my weakness. Since you are reading my articles, I can safely deduce that spending time wisely isn’t your strongest forte. And since footballers are humans, they also have their weaknesses.

Even the greatest players in the world have their shortcomings. It is only natural since nothing is perfect – except Melanie Laurent’s eyes and Ne Obliviscaris’ songs – and footballers are no exceptions either.

So without beating the bush any further – I am just getting worse at writing proper intros – here are the 5 best footballers with their one glaring weakness…

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#1 Lionel Messi – Right-foot

Few things in this world are priceless: the smile on your parents’ face after you make them proud, the moment you see your first-born, Pineapple-topped Pizza and Lionel Messi’s left-foot. The Argentine’s left-foot is like the paintbrush of Pablo Picasso while the pitch he plays on is the canvas on which the dreams are drawn.

Everybody dreams, but what makes one an artist is the ability to translate the dream into reality. Art is not really just making music or complex paintings, it is actually listening to your heart and synchronising your mind with it to create something magnificent.

That’s what Pablo Picasso used to do with a paintbrush – he aligned his dreams with his mind – and that’s what Messi does with his left-foot; he weaves magic.

However, when the ball falls on his right, it seems as though his mind isn’t as aligned with his heart. The Argentina captain might have scored a few goals with his right, but it is a far-cry from what he can do with his left.

When the ball is on his right, it is like he isn’t dreaming anymore – and how can you weave magic without reveries?

#2 Neymar – Heading

Neymar gives the perfect 'I am not sure how to do this' expression here

Aesthetic and football are basically synonyms. At its best, football has the ability to make people forget about all their worries for some time – which is a great strength in itself. And at its worst, well… it still keeps the ability to make one forget about their problems.

In this world, it is mostly always about us. How we feel, our problems, our complexities, our dreams... in such a self-centered world, when something can actually make you forget about you, it has to be something special.

Football does that to you and players like Neymar help the cause the most. When he runs with the ball with full pace, taking out defenders one-by-one like they were dust on his shoulders, it feels like he is a Greek warrior of olden days vanquishing his enemies single-handedly.

Give the ball at his feet, he will do magic. However, give the ball at his head – and he needs magic. And that is something that irks even the great Pele.

"Neymar is a good player, but how many goals has he scored with his head in his life?" Pele told Placar.

"He is an excellent player, but Vasconcelos, my team-mate at Santos, was 10 times better than Neymar, without any doubt."

Pele has a tendency to exaggerate, so I will skip the Vasconcelos part. However, for someone who is 5’9”, he doesn’t seem to have a great heading technique. Messi, despite being shorter, is actually a good header of the ball – something that can’t be opined on Neymar.

#3 Eden Hazard – Goal-scoring

Hazard doesn't have the scoring instinct that a player like him should

What’s the reason that keeps Eden Hazard out of the contention for the Ballon d’Or? I mean, this is a guy that can do with an orange what many footballers can’t so with a football. He has astute dribbling abilities, has the vision to pick out the channels and the guile to make the killer balls through it.

When you watch him play, that’s the only thing you ask yourself: why hasn’t this guy been even on the Ballon d'Or podium yet? The answer to that, however, comes to you in the very same game.

August 2015. Manchester City vs Chelsea. The Citizens are leading one-nil with just a little over 20 minutes to go. Not a safe place to be when the Belgian picks out Diego Costa on the left in between Bacary Sagna and Vincent Kompany with a slick pass on the counter.

When you see the pass, you know that he has the vision to pick out his team-mate and the technique to execute the pass with perfection. However, that’s when you notice something odd about him; something that you never see in, say, Cristiano Ronaldo.

He passes it to the Spaniard and considers his job done. The former Lille man slows down his pace and just jogs forward rather passively. Costa is now stranded, but does incredibly well to fake a shot and send Kompany down the McDonald’s lane.

Now he sees Hazard at the edge of the D-box and passes it to him. Meanwhile, Eliquam Mangala catches up, but Hazard sends him the wrong way. Now, Kolarov catches up, but Hazard shoots it just a fraction of a second earlier – straight at Joe Hart.

You realise two things here. One, Hazard doesn’t have the goal-scoring instincts of someone like Cristiano Ronaldo. If he did, he would have zoomed in between Bacary Sagna and Mangala right after releasing the ball to Costa. That, in turn, would have allowed the former Atleti man to slide it sideways to the onrushing Belgian.

Which in turn would have allowed Hazard to take it first time with a clear view of the goal and no defender having the time to catch up.

And two: he is not the best of finishers. That move basically sums up why Hazard deserves to be up there with the elites and why he doesn’t.

#4 Manuel Neuer – Concentration

Neuer lapses a lot for someone of his calibre

Manuel Neuer is the banter goalie of our era. This is a guy that spends most of his time chilling nearer to the centre-circle than his own box and makes some of the best saves one could ever have the privilege to see.

For example, last season in the Champions League quarter-final against Real Madrid, Cristiano Ronaldo received a great ball from the left from Karim Benzema. The Portuguese took one touch to control it and go to the left of Neuer before shooting it towards the right-side of the German keeper with his very next touch.

Now, the former Schalke man was already moving towards his left when the ball was blazing past his right, but somehow managed to block the ball by extending his right arm. The sheer audacity of the save lies in the fact that the German didn’t move a muscle apart from his right arm and the ball thundered off his hands as if it hit some kind of a wall.

And it was shot by Cristiano Ronaldo, the man who could actually let NASA use his feet as space-shuttle launchers and save billions of dollars in the process.

But there’s another side of Neuer that almost always pops of every now and then. Bayern are so dominating in the Bundesliga that Neuer could basically take a pillow and blanket and sleep on the pitch in front of the goal.

And sometimes he really does that, mentally at least. His lack of concentration often makes him the centre of some of the most hilarious mistakes as you can see in the video below.

#5 Cristiano Ronaldo – Dribbling

No longer the best of dribblers

And we will conclude this slide with the reigning Ballon d’Or winner. Did you watch him at Manchester United? That guy could dribble past defenders all day long and still have the energy for more. It was like he was on some kind of a modified Viagra pills that allowed him to beast-out his opponents with dribbling rage.

At Madrid now, he is a scoring machine. You give him the ball in the box and the next thing you would do is celebrate with him while the opposition goalkeeper helplessly takes the ball out of the goal. It’s like putting money into a cold-drink vending machine; you always end up with a soda in your hand.

The one time you don’t, it is an anomaly – and that’s what it is when Cristiano Ronaldo misses a chance.

However, he has sacrificed his dribbling skills to such an extent that he can now longer beat defenders like he once could. Initially, he did it on purpose as he attempted fewer dribbles and compensated it by making cunning moves inside the box.

Now, even when he tries, he fails almost always. Last season was his worst, though, as he could complete only 0.9 dribbles-per-game in La Liga – which is his worst tally ever.