The ball moves faster than the player, and in my opinion passing is generally a better floor raising skill than dribbling.

BUT, this thread and short video shows the importance of having players that can take on defenders with a dribble.

[THREAD] https://twitter.com/jimenajuani/status/1312038259439136774

For a side centered around JdP, players need to have good first touch, vision, and spatial awareness. Passing is supremely important and in general I view the ability to break lines with passes as more valuable for deep lying players than the ability to break lines by dribbling.

This is especially the case because off ball movement is so effective. Numerical and positional superiority can make 3MR’s and attacking blind spots with off ball movement deadly. But you need the passes to be on target for this. Passing is a great floor raising skill for most.

However, there will come a time to utilize qualitative superiority in 1v1, 2v2, or even in 2v1 situations described above by Bielsa, where it is more advantageous to dribble instead of pass. Having great dribbling ability further up the pitch becomes incredibly scalable.

What do I mean by scalability? Well, when an attacking player has great dribbling ability, it means it can make their side significantly better than if they were replaced by a different player with just average dribbling ability.

The floor of team performance is already high via passing, ball retention, solidity from positioning, and off ball movement. Having a couple elite dribblers makes that very solid team performance output and catapults it to elite levels.

A couple of great examples are Hazard within Sarriball and Mahrez/Sane under Pep. These players were purposely and repeatedly found in space where they could dribble at the defense and finish breaking them down completely.

Not every player has to have this ability, but finding a few players in the right positions is highly scalable for success. Ideally you would have at least one midfielder and one forward/winger with elite dribbling ability.

Elite dribblers are difficult to find. Ideally everyone else on the team should have good floor raising abilities as I mentioned before (first touch, vision, spatial awareness, etc). Once you add in those special players in the right spots, the whole thing can really take off.

This thread started as a 2 part tweet. Then I kept on writing. At the end of the day, I really wanted to highlight team composition, general high value skills, and the impact of having scalable and elite dribblers in certain spots. Thanks for reading.