The main reason I started this blog back in March was to teach others how to play football like Ronaldinho. This meant I would have to create some sort of guide to help footballers visiting this website understand the various secrets and techniques that Ronnie has in his repertoire. I’ve done this with the Be Like Ronaldinho Book and I must say I’m glad with what has been produced, however, it brings me to point of asking, is imitating someone really the best way to go if you want to be a great player?

At First Yes, Later On No

Yes because, by imitation you learn a wonderful technique that has taken this footballer 10+ years to learn. Later on, when you’ve mastered this technique imitation becomes something that you cannot go back to, because as a footballer it is your duty to come up with new and exciting plays, without having to borrow off other players. This is what can make you a truly great footballer, the idea of individuality. Personally, I love to please a crowd of fans because they’ve come to watch a great game of football being played out and if I can show them skills that have taken me countless hours to perfect that’s great, but when I show them something they haven’t seen before, at any level, then that’s something special I have and you can too.

Ronaldinho vs Zlatan Ibrahimovic

Both are my favourite players and both do the Elastico as one of their trademark moves. Now, both have varied styles of executing this technique and both ways I have seen are rather effective. At one stage or another, both had to imitate this move to get it right, but then after mastering the technique, they added their own little touch to it. Zlatan like to run along the sideline when doing this whereas Ronaldinho likes to pull this move off near the corners and the goal line, with near stationary position. Like I said before if it works for them and it will work for you also. If you imitate, then put your own spin on it, the crowd will love you for it because they’re seeing something new. But nothing beats a technique you’ve come up with all by yourself, but I’ll leave that one for another time. For now, here’s a video of Zlatan and Ronaldinho, showcasing their differences and similarities.

Barcelona remained undefeated after their match with Athletic Bilbao at the Nou Camp, which played out yesterday. Ronaldinho was by far the star of the show with a couple of goals in the bag, both off of set plays. Barcelona came into this match with a draw to start of the season and so they needed to produce results for the fans most of all. Coach Rijkaard did say that Bilbao has always been a hard team to overcome and so it was great to see Barca triumph. As I said before, Ronaldinho came out the main protagonist of the win with two goals and the new recruit Toure Yaya keeps impressing with a thunderous strike late in the game to find the cross bar, hit the ground on what looked like the goal side of the line and the referee concurred to give him the benefit of the doubt. Now whether it crossed the line or not is something you can judge for yourself, with the video I have provided below.

Ronaldinho’s Goals

Watching Ronaldinho’s free kick in particular shows me the amount of practice that he puts into his set plays. The sheer power and accuracy is a testament to his tenacity to keep perfecting his game. From a viewers perspective, you can see that his mind is purely set on playing good football and it shows through the quality of his strikes and plays. It seems as though the break he asked for from the Copa America that was played a few months ago has really impacted him in a good way and was exactly what the doctor ordered. I hope that he keeps up this great display of football and does us, his fans, proud.

As I write this Barcelona will be taking on Athletic Bilbao in a few short hours, which will be their 2nd official La Liga match this season. Coach Frank Rijkaard has said the following about the opposition:

We have suffered down the years to produce a result against them. We will have to be focussed and to work hard to achieve our aim. They are very well organised at the back.

Moving on, the other day Barcelona took on Inter Milan to take out the honour of having the Gamper Trophy, I spoke about it in the last post. Barcelona showed their tenacious attacking capabilities against a depleted Inter, who were missing some big names, such as Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who happens to be my second favourite footballer, after Ronaldinho. On that note, the Brazillian scored the first goal of the match with a penalty kick given to him by young Mexican Giovani Dos Santos. You can find that goal and the highlights of the match below: (I’ll be covering the Athletic Bilbao match tomorrow, so hang around)