World Football: 25 Biggest Ball Hogs

There are few things more frustrating in a football match than seeing someone hog the ball.

Whether you are playing with your friends or watching a professional game, the sight of someone refusing to relinquish possession when a teammate is screaming for it is a constant source of annoyance.

You know the type—fancy themselves as the most skillful player on the pitch, wanting to beat five defenders single-handedly in the flashiest manner possible.

Either that or they are the type to receive the ball and have nothing else on their minds except to shoot, no matter where they are on the field.

Still, as frustrating as these players are, some of them can be indulged because there is a fair chance they will produce the moment of magic. On those rare occasions, they may set off on maze runs or pull the trigger from an unlikely position.

Here is an exhaustive list of some of football's biggest black holes—once they get the ball, it's not coming back.

Kerlon

Kerlon Moura Souza became an internet teen sensation a few years back while playing for Cruzeiro due to his patented "seal dribble," where he would run forward at pace while bouncing the ball on his head.

Opposition defenders were powerless to do anything against the midfielder's runs, until Atletico Mineiro's Coelho showed them the way—if a seal runs past you, just club it.

Kerlon had spells at Inter Milan and Ajax before returning to Brazil, and his promising career has been continually hampered by injuries.

Perhaps from being clubbed one too many times.

Ricardo Quaresma

There are so many Portuguese players past and present who could be included on this list (including a rather more celebrated one to come later), but Quaresma really takes the biscuit.

A supremely talented wide forward, Quaresma burst on the scene at hometown club Sporting Lisbon, before having the best spell of his career at Porto.

However, stints at Barcelona, Inter Milan and Chelsea all fell flat because big clubs outside Portugal were not willing to tolerate his penchant for flicks and tricks at the expense of an end product.

He is now playing at Besiktas in Turkey.

Steve McManaman

'Macca' was one of those players who was unlucky to be born in England, a nation which has an in-built suspicion of any player with a degree of flair and technique who doesn't always charge around at 100 miles per hour.

The Liverpool-born attacking midfielder had some dazzling moments at Anfield, but like so many players of his type, he struggled to fit into the England team which was unable to accommodate his runs at opponents.

Still, the two Champions League titles he claimed at Real Madrid—scoring a goal and being named Man of the Match in the 2000 final—are probably some compensation.

Diego Maradona

One of the greatest players of all time, and that is because he was one of the greatest ball hogs of all time.

He may be as mad as a box for frogs, but El Pibe's ability with the ball at his feet was second to none. His low centre of gravity allowed him to skip past opponents, and he didn't need help from teammates.

There is not greater example of this than his second goal in the 1986 World Cup quarterfinal against England.

He sliced his way through half the England team before rounding the goalkeeper to score arguably the greatest World Cup goal ever.

Darren Bent

A fine example of how a striker needs to do little else except concentrate on scoring goals, Bent spends the vast majority of matches jogging across the back line and staying on the shoulder of the last defender to wait for an opening. 

When that opening comes he will pounce and, as often as not, score within two or three touches. His job is to score goals, nothing more.

In England's recent match in Montenegro, Bent was substituted after 64 minutes with one goal scored and two passes completed.  

Adel Taarabt

Queens Park Rangers' mercurial Moroccan never made the grade as a precocious youngster at Tottenham. He wore the patience of three different managers, and the fans, with his fondness for a flashy step-over flick which resulted in him losing the ball.

A loan spell at QPR became a permanent move, and manager Neil Warnock indulged his excesses as he thrived in English football's second tier, scoring 19 goals as the club won promotion as winners of the Championship.

However, back in the Premier League, Taarabt has found it tough once again. His petulance has come back to the fore.

When he was substituted in the recent 6-0 thrashing at Fulham, he immediately left the ground and was pictured at a bus stop around the corner while the game was still going on.

Garrincha

One of the true greats of Brazilian football, even if his self-destructive alcoholism would later do much to sully his legacy.

The Pau Grande-born winger was born with a deformed spine and bowed legs, but that actually aided him in becoming one of the most exceptional dribblers the game has ever seen.

Garrincha weaved his way to two World Cups as part of the great side of the late 1950s and early 1960s, which also featured Pele.

Gabriel Batistuta

One of the most lethal finishers of the past 20 years, the legendary Argentinian striker was not nicknamed 'Batigol' for nothing.

He was another of those single-minded attackers who could be forgiven for forgetting he was on the field, only remembering when he suddenly had the ball in the back of the net.

After a few years flitting between Argentina's three biggest clubs—Newell's Old Boys, River Plate and Boca Juniors—without setting the world alight, his move to Fiorentina heralded a nine-year spell in which he scored 168 goals in 269 Serie A appearances for the Tuscan club.

He retired from international duty with a record of 56 goals in 78 games for Argentina. Teammates soon learned to accept that him not passing the ball was usually to everyone's benefit.

What makes this feat all the more impressive was that he never really cared too much for football.

Polo is his favourite sport, which he is now free to pursue at his leisure. 

Arjen Robben

Like his fellow Dutchman, Robin van Persie, Robben is one of the most devastating attacking players in the world if he is fit. It is just such a shame that it has been such a big "if" over the years.

Robben arrived at Chelsea as a 20-year-old who looked going on 40, but he proved himself to be as rapid at his feet as his hairline was receding.

His electric pace often meant his teammates could not keep up, but it was just as well because he would more often cut inside and go for goal rather than head for the byline and cross. 

The same injury problems plagued him at Real Madrid and current club Bayern Munich, but there is hope that at 27 years of age, he can play through his peak years uninhibited by his hamstrings. 

George Weah

The first and so far only African player to be named World Footballer of the Year, Weah was a truly exceptional striker who never got to grace a World Cup with his home country Liberia.

He won plenty of trophies for Monaco, Paris Saint-Germain and Milan, but it was at the Italian club where he scored his finest ever goal.

It remains one of the best examples of where ball hogging can get you to this day.

On the opening day of the 1996-97 season, with Verona at San Siro, Weah picked up the ball inside his own penalty area and proceeded to surge forward.

He kept going and beat one player after another, getting a lucky bounce of the ball along the way, before making it into the opposition area and beating the keeper to score one of the best individual goals ever seen.

Robinho

Another talented player to pull on the famous Rossoneri shirt of Milan, although the precocious Brazilian is not quite in Weah's class.

When he was a shock deadline-day signing from Real Madrid in 2008—for a British record of £32.5 million, no less—he came with a reputation of being a show-boater who valued showcasing his own skills over fighting for the team. 

And so it proved.

During his chequered year-and-a-half as a City player, Robinho repeatedly frustrated his teammates with his selfishness on the ball and became known as a real "homer"—only three of his 14 Premier League goals came away from home. 

Paul Gascoigne

Another English player who possessed a most non-British level of skill, 'Gazza' became a global superstar following his performance at the 1990 World Cup, when England reached the semifinals.

The young Geordie won many admirers for his cheekiness both off the pitch and on it, and he reveled in turning a string of panicky fullbacks inside out, as he embarrassed them with his skills.

While he was also blessed with an eye for a great pass, it was when he had the ball at his feet that Gazza was at his best.

Few begrudged him hogging the ball when they watched him in action. 

Cristiano Ronaldo

Well, he had to come up, didn't he?

The world's most expensive player recently made his 100th competitive appearance for Real Madrid. In that time, he has scored a quite obscene 95 goals. Those ridiculous figures could never be clocked up by a selfless player.

At Manchester United, the Portuguese was converted from a winger into a new kind of forward, charged with the task of picking up the ball wherever he was given it and going for goal.

Ronaldo has the pace, power and skill to justify keeping the ball in his possession and is perhaps the world's foremost ball hog.  

Lionel Messi

It seems churlish to mention Ronaldo and not also bring up his Barcelona nemesis.

Messi has beaten him to the World Player of the Year award for the past two seasons, and it seems unthinkable that he will not complete a hat trick next time the gong is handed out.

Barca may be set up in a different way to Ronaldo, with the whole team patiently passing the ball around to their hearts' content as opposed to Real always looking for Ronaldo.

But Messi is still allowed to do his own thing whenever he fancies

And, more often then not, his own thing entails him ghosting past a handful of defenders, turning sharp angles at pace with the ball stuck to his feet and beating the quaking goalkeeper.

His latest bout of selfishness—a brace against Racing Santander last weekend—saw him surpass Laszlo Kubala's haul of 194 goals to become the second highest scorer in Barca's history. 

Jose Dominguez

The diminutive Portuguese winger's three-year spell is chiefly remembered among the White Hart Lane faithful for three reasons.

1—At 5'3," he is the shortest player ever to play in the Premier League.

2—He was honoured during his time at Spurs with a dubious chant that contained the line, "My name is Jose Dominguez/I play on the wing-ez."

3—He seemed to have a pathological fear about passing the ball to a teammate, instead persisting with nipping in from the touch line in a bid for goal. He registered five strikes in his three years at Spurs.

Mario Balotelli

Despite the summer arrival of Sergio Aguero and the real Edin Dzeko finally showing himself at Manchester City, this season has seen something of a change in Balotelli.

The volatile Italian still retains the same air of menace and unpredictability, but he seems to have truly found his feet in English football.

He has scored in each of his last four appearances for City.

That run has been greatly facilitated by him shooting from almost anywhere within a 25-yard radius of the goal. But, then again, who is going to argue with him?

Jermain Defoe

The Tottenham striker is a play for whom the term "shoot on sight" could have been coined.

The former Charlton, West Ham and Portsmouth marksman is an unashamed poacher with an instinct for getting in the right positions and letting fly at the slightest sight of goal.

Defoe displayed just what his selfish tendencies can bring to the table when he turned and fired a clinical low finish from outside the area just four minutes after coming off the bench at Newcastle Sunday.

His limited game has often been to the detriment of his international career, but he remains a potent weapon as long as he is always so single-minded.

Alexander Hleb

The Belarus international midfielder was not the most popular figure during his time at Arsenal, but he was a key component of the Gunners side that reached the 2006 Champions League final.

While the rest of the midfield was tasked with fighting fire with fire by passing their way through Barcelona's central unit, Hleb's brief was to pick the ball up and carry it down the flank.

In short, he was tasked with moving the entire Arsenal team 30 to 40 yards before playing the ball back inside to a teammate.

As such, his very reason for being on the field was to hog the ball.

It may not have been pretty, but it almost worked.   

Denilson

When Real Betis signed attacker Denilson de Oliveira Araujo soon after he had helped Brazil to that year's World Cup final in France, they thought they were getting a player who could propel the Andalucian club to its first league title in more than 60 years.

Instead, they bought a £21.5 million lemon, who seemed more interested in trying—and failing—to dribble his way past as many opposition defenders as he could before he losing the ball.

And that was when he could be bothered.

He still made the Brazil squad for the 2002 World Cup and returned to Betis with a winner's medal, but he never brought his international form with him.

He instead saw out his career with random stints in Saudi Arabia, USA, Brazil, Vietnam and Greece.

Darren Huckerby

The Nottingham-born winger saw his star rise in the mid to-late-1990s at perennial Premier League cellar dwellers Coventry City, where he formed an effective partnership with striker Dion Dublin.

However, England manager Glenn Hoddle never gave him a senior call-up, expressing reservations about his propensity for going on ambitious solo runs only to run himself down a cul de sac.

When it worked—such as the sublime winner against Manchester United which saw him weave through several defenders before firing past the keeper—it was amazing.

But when it didn't, it was infuriating. 

Andrei Arshavin

It seems odd to criticise a player who notched up more than a dozen Premier League assists last season for being a ball hog, but that is how many Arsenal fans felt as they endured yet another trophy-less campaign.

The Russian truly announced his arrival in English football in April 2009, when he scored four goals at Anfield with four shots on target. 

Being a selfish player served him well when things were going for him, but since then many Gunners supporters have had their patience tried.

This began when yet another drive from the left flank into the penalty area resulted in him losing the ball for his team.

Saeed Al-Owairan

One of the surprises of the 1994 World Cup, Saudi Arabia qualified for the knockout stage in USA after finishing second in their group.

The 1-0 win over Belgium in Orlando was key to that, as it relegated the European side to sweating it out before they were seen through as one of the best third place teams in the group stage.

That victory came via Al-Owairan's mesmeric solo goal, which saw him dribble virtually from one end of the pitch to the other to score what would later be voted the sixth best goal of the century in a FIFA poll.

Joaquin

Once the bright young hope of Spanish football, when La Furia Roja were in more desperate times, Joaquin was a winger who had the world at his feet.

The young lad from Seville made big waves at Real Betis, helping the southerners win promotion back up to La Liga (no thanks to Denilson, who went out on loan for the season).

He then played so well in his top-flight debut that he ended up going to the World Cup.

It may be slightly unfair to label him a ball hog for his time at Betis, as he set up plenty of goals for others, but his subsequent moves to Valencia and Malaga have been largely characterised by his newly found selfish streak.

Luis Garcia

You remember Luis Garcia, don't you? Played for Liverpool? Won the Champions League? Used to wear an Alice band?

That's right, the guy with the Alice band.

Anyway, can you remember much else of what he did during his three years at Liverpool apart from score long-range rockets at crucial times?

It's difficult, isn't it?

With Xabi Alonso alongside him to take care of the actual passing and tackling in the centre of the pitch, Garcia was free to roam around the edge of the box, waiting for the ball to come into his vicinity so he could fire it past the keeper.

But hey, don't knock it. It helped win Liverpool their fifth European Cup. 

Spain

Can you think of a greater collection of ball hogs ever assembled than the current world and European champions?

The Spanish philosophy is a simple one—if you have possession of the ball, then the opposition cannot score.

So they became very, very good at keeping possession of the ball.

Obviously, they are good at other things too, such as goalkeeping (Iker Casillas, Victor Valdes, Pepe Reina), defending (Gerard Pique, Sergio Ramos, Carles Puyol) and scoring goals (David Villa, Fernando To...well, maybe not).

But the basis of their success is their unhealthy obsession with not losing the ball.

David Silva's opening goal in the 2-0 win over Scotland last week was the culmination of a 42-pass move. That should tell you all you need to know.