The inspiration for this post comes from a Be Like Ronaldinho subscriber, who emailed me the other day to ask me the following:

Hey Sonny I had a question for you, why doesnt ronaldinho play defensively? I saw videos of him defending but Zidane embarassed him =( Lately I haven’t seen him trying to strip other players with the ball

I was pretty curious to see this video that he was talking about so I replied to this question like this:

Could you send me the url of that video? He’s an attacking midfielder / striker, so he hasn’t played any professional game so far in a defensive role. You see the coaches over the years see that his potential and skill only benefit the team when he plays forward setting up goals. As a result his defending could lack, but I honestly think he has potential to be a pretty good defender too, not as good as Canavaro for instance, but he can do well for his team. I’ll get back to you once I’ve seen the video.

And so I waited a couple of days to see that he came through with the url for the video and just for your convenience I’ve put it just beneath. As it turns out, it’s a classic Zidane vs Ronaldinho video, but a different one, not the popular one on YouTube. Towards the end of the video you will see the incident the fellow reader is talking about. Under the video you can see my response and just a bit more.

You’ve got the book with you, that move is called The Switch. Ronaldinho comes in at speed from behind and Zidane does the smart thing by switching his direction, therefore rendering Ron useless as he is now no where near the ball. Have a look at it again.

Whether you’re Ronaldinho or Cannavaro there was little chance of taking the ball off the French magician in that case. We could argue that Ronaldinho doesn’t go after the ball here because there is another team member who is now closer to take on Zidane. In either case it has to be said that whether you are a striker or a midfielder, defending the ball and stealing the ball from the opposition is a vital skill to have and can save your team.