This article is from UBVIA.com
Pep Guardiola once said: “I’ve been a coach for a few years now and I have come to the conclusion that a truly good player is always a good player. It’s very hard to teach a bad player to be a good one. You can’t really teach someone to dribble. The timing needed to go past someone, that instant in which you catch out your opponent, when you go past him and a new scenario opens up before you … Dribbling is, at heart, a trick, a con. It’s not speed. It’s not physique. It’s an art.”
You can see the importance of a player’s ability to dribble in Guardiola’s system both in transition, as well as in more controlled situations. When a team sets up in a deep, narrow shape, the ability of a player to take a player out of play by going past them is key to unlocking an opposition’s defence. A well-coordinated defence can quickly come undone by the trickery and penetration of an expert dribbler.
