10 most graceful players in world football today

Rivelino. Johan Cruyff. Diego Maradona. Roberto Baggio. Dennis Bergkamp. Pavel Nedved. Zinedine Zidane. ‘Il Fenomeno’ Ronaldo. All legends of the game – players who can walk into football’s Hall of Fame blind-folded.These are players so decorated that no song of praise can amount to exaggeration in their case. They saw the beautiful game through an eye that us mortals don’t have access to; they are orchestrators who composed the greatest melodies in the game; men who gave the word “grace” new meaning every day. For grace is what stood them apart from equally illustrious peers during their distinguished careers.These were players who could insult our intelligence by making football look so easy that we’ve all stupidly tried imitating them in our college grounds. These were players who exuded a lazy elegance in their prime, an elegance so sublime that it’s hard to find it in today’s age of specialized, sophisticated football. Needless to say, graceful footballers are a dying breed today. They’re square pegs in round holes for managers who prefer the consistent yet predictable machines over the mercurial genius that this breed could bring. But thankfully, we still have a few of them left.And they serve as massive inspiration to others who are gifted enough to play the game the way they do. Football needs them. For like any other sport, football too needs its smattering of grace.Here’s a look at the 10 most graceful players in the beautiful game today.

#10 Isco

A player who has had a fledgling career at best to be on this list would take something special – and special is exactly what Francisco Roman Alarcon Suarez is. A player who has Ariel Ortega’s skills and Juan Roman Riquelme’s perseverance, it is a shame that Isco rarely gets the acclaim he deserves at Real Madrid. Indeed, it is a travesty that this fantastic playmaker missed out on a spot in Spain’s squad that failed miserably in Brazil.

Right from his early days as the prodigal son of Malaga, Isco has always been seen as a player with unreal ability. His close control, first touch and dizzyingly yet delightfully hazy feet make him an absolute nightmare to mark. Armed with intelligence that belies his age, the Spaniard never fails to please the eye, whether it is on the wings or in his favoured No. 10 role. In fact, he’s been so good this season that playing Gareth Bale ahead of him has been widely frowned upon by faithful Madridistas.

As far as the best young talents in the world go, there’s Neymar, Mario Gotze, Eden Hazard and Paul Pogba leading the list. But Isco is a player who is more aesthetically pleasing than all his equally accomplished peers. See the video to believe.

#9 Philipp Lahm

A defender featuring in a list that prioritizes grace over everything else is blasphemy. Or so one feels until the man in question is revealed to be Philipp Lahm. Arguably the best reader of the game in the world today, Lahm might not feature in the who’s who of highlight reel footballers, but ask Joachim Low or Pep Guardiola and they’ll tell you that the diminutive German was/ is the first name on their team sheet.

Lahm plays the game at a pace that most full-backs aren’t accustomed to – and I’m not talking about speed as a superlative here. As calm as anybody the game has ever seen, Philip Lahm is to football what Rahul Dravid was to cricket – selfless, unassuming, a real leader, multi-talented and graceful in everything he did, including his perfectly-timed international retirement. He’s truly been “The Wall” that Bayern and Germany have leaned back on during times of strife.

With near-flawless passing ability, and an analytical mind that’s helped him play across all defensive and midfield positions, Lahm stands out for the precision with which he plays the game. He makes what he does look so effortless and he keeps things so simple that he’s rarely given his due, if ever, during the gala award nights. Not that he’d care though. For he’s as gracious as he’s graceful.

#8 David Silva

Some playmakers dribble well. Others pass well. And the rest score more than their fair share of goals. Some are so good that they have two of these traits. Some are even better, as they occasionally tick the third box too. And then, there’s David Silva, who meets all these credentials, week in, week out.

Eclipsed by an army of Barcelona’s Golden Generation in the La Roja squad, Silva’s true ability shines through every time he sets foot donning the sky blue shirt of Manchester City. The left-footed wizard is so good that he’s managed to bring out admiring smiles in the stony and statuesque visages of Vicente Del Bosque and Manuel Pellegrini.

The primary exponent of the La Pelopina turn along with a certain balding sorcerer about whom more shall be said later, Silva is the master of the assist before the assist, the biggest supply line among an assembly of expensive stars.

Add an uncanny knack of scoring crucial goals to his arsenal (he loves scoring against them, so kindly excuse the pun), and you have a playmaker par excellence. With a graceful caress of the ball being more than enough for him to find his way out of the tightest of spaces, Silva is arguably the best No. 10 in the game when on song – read almost always.

#7 Kaka

Finding a more loved footballer than Ricardo Kaka is a harder task than making Per Mertesacker sprint in FIFA. The Brazilian No. 10, the greatest footballer of his generation during his heydays, has, is and will always be an epitome of grace – both on and off the pitch. With a smiling demeanour and an effortless elegance that hid the monster of a footballer that lay inside, Kaka at his peak was as close to the perfect trequartista as anybody ever was.

His days as the darling of an impregnable San Siro may be long gone, but he still gives us glimpses of his magic – albeit occasionally. Passes that followed the trajectory of hairpins, dribbles that left defenders performing hip-hop moves, goals that sent fans into orgasmic ecstasy – Kaka was a master of them all. And even more incredibly, he carried all of them out with a kind of effortless ease that was more familiar to futsal arenas than football stadiums.

The humble, god-fearing Selecao maestro is the perfect role model for kids looking to write their names in the history of the game – hard-working, selfless, skilful, composed and most importantly, a fantastic human being. The game needs more players like Kaka. The world needs more people like Kaka.

#6 Dimitar Berbatov

Dimitar Berbatov, on his good days, can be brilliant, masterful, clinical, lethal and graceful. Dimitar Berbatov, on his bad days, can be terrible, infuriatingly lazy, anonymous, a liability, and graceful. The enigma that he is has carried the word to stratospheric heights on certain days and even made it look derogatory on certain others. How else can you be terrible and graceful on the same night? But then, you aren’t called an enigma for nothing.

Playing the game at his own languid pace, without a care in the world, the Bulgarian superstar can put even the greatest of defenders to shame. But then, like every positive sentence about the Monaco forward, this one too has an underlying clause that reads “on his day” beneath it. He is a real rarity in the game, somebody who’s proven time and time again that talent, with absolutely zero industry, can still get you places. (Do not try that at home).

Every time I watched him touch the ball with that lazy, indifferent look on his face last season, I wondered incredulously as to how this guy could play for a team that was rock-bottom in the Premier League. I wondered where an acceptable amount of work-rate would’ve catapulted him to. But then, he is what he is. Better enjoy and embrace, than question and criticise.

#5 Andres Iniesta

I talked of a certain balding sorcerer earlier. Now, if David Silva can deem himself unlucky to have been born during Spain’s Golden Generation, Andres Iniesta can count himself to be cursed by the stars to have been born during the time of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. How else can you explain this genius missing out on the Ballon d’Or time and time again?

A member of the holy trident of the greatest club team of all time, Iniesta fuses football and poetry together, with those feet of his doing things that no pen can describe. The greatest exponent of the La Pelopina that I had mentioned earlier, the GIF of him making Christophe Jallet look like a lost school kid during a Champions League quarterfinal shows what the man is all about. He is inventive, ingenious and incredible.

He doesn’t do the elaborate stepovers or body feints that most acclaimed dribblers do, but instead does things with the ball so instinctive that they’re rarely replicated. Indeed, there are few better sights in the game than seeing Iniesta take on defenders and outwit them with nonchalant ease. He may be past his prime, but an out-of-sorts Iniesta is still a class act. A world class one at that.

#4 Pablo Aimar

Pablo Aimar just about scrapes into this list by virtue of still having not officially announced his retirement, in spite of being a 35-year-old free agent. Probably the least decorated player in the list, Aimar would have had to be one helluva watch to be placed above much more illustrious names. Was he? You bet.

I still remember the match where he absolutely bossed the midfield against Barcelona in the 2012-13 Champions League. Yes, he bossed the midfield against Barcelona, of all teams. Because when on song, Pablo Aimar was an absolute force of nature – next to unplayable. You don’t become Lionel Messi’s inspiration by doing nothing.

Frequently compared with the other great Argentine playmaker of his time Juan Roman Riquelme, “El Mago”(The Wizard) excelled for years as a “10-and-a-half”, a kind of advanced playmaker, wherein he fed off the striker and vice-versa.

Nothing epitomised this symbiotic relationship more than his partnership with Javier Saviola, both at River Plate and at Benfica. Saviola said this about his friend, “I have never played with another player who knows where I'm going to be or just lifts his head knowing where I'm going to."

#3 Andrea Pirlo

Gifted with the most famous dead-ball feet and beard in the game, Andrea Pirlo is the Luciano Pavarotti of football, operating in the heavy metal age of the game, only to boss it around. Right from his early days as a trequartista to his current playing days as a wise old regista, Pirlo wears the garb of a footballing Kasparov with typically cool flamboyance.

The only time I’ve seen the great man run (at his own, calm pace nevertheless) was when he sprinted alongside his team-mates to embrace Gianluigi Buffon after that famous triumph in Berlin in the summer of 2006.

At other times, he ambles and strolls across the length and breadth of the pitch, single-handedly dictating the tempo of a football match that 21 others fail to do together. Who else can walk through the busiest part of the football pitch and still end up being the subject of all envy?

His metronomic passing, combined with his immaculate sense of when to play the ball high and long, make him the perfect deep-lying playmaker. With a coolness that is matched by only Zlatan Ibrahimovic in the game, Andrea Pirlo is a real one-off, a true odd one out in this age.

#2 Lionel Messi

And yes, Lionel Messi’s name has been read out in yet another list of footballing excellence. Maybe I shouldn’t have included him in the list, for it is unfair to compare mortals with this phenomenon. “He is something else” as Ray Hudson, his biggest fan, would succinctly put it.

To be the best in the world takes some doing. To be the greatest of all time, albeit with some debate, takes even more. To do all this with the grace of a dancing gazelle takes something outlier, and that is exactly what La Pulga is.

Right from the day he announced himself to the world with that golazo against Getafe as a teenager, he has been going about making people run out of superlatives as a matter of habit. In fact, it wouldn’t be remiss to say that every goal he scores has his own, graceful trademark stamped on it.

The way he holds a magnetic will over the ball, turning defender after helpless defender into nothing more than bemused spectators, before sending it to the back of the net with all the finesse that he can muster, is a sight one can never be tired of seeing.

By the way, he hasn’t yet turned 28. Be scared defenders. Be very scared.

#1 Ronaldinho

Any player who trumps Leo Messi in any list and isn’t named Cristiano Ronaldo must be an extraordinary footballer. And that is an understatement as far as Ronaldinho Gaucho is concerned.

Grace, elegance, poise and brilliance are all words that come to mind when we think of “He-who-transformed-football-into-a-legitimate-dance-form”. Every goal he scores, every dribble he embarks upon and every touch of the ball he takes can be played to the tune of a Calypso beat, with that child-like smile at the end being the perfect flourish.

No man has given as much joy to his fans and no man ever will, the way the long-haired Samba magician did during the years he spent as the king of Camp Nou. The flip-flap elastico which was dead after Rivelino bid adieu was revived by Ronaldinho, with his name being synonymous with the skill. The stepovers, the rabonas, the rainbows, the body feints – they all continue to mesmerise millions upon millions, some of whom fell in love with the game because of this man.

There’ll never be another Ronaldinho, for there can never be another footballer who treats a Champions League final as if it were a sunny afternoon football match with friends at the Copacabana. Everytime the football met the bunny loop of Ronaldinho’s laces, the world stood still, watched and smiled along with him.