Not true. He had good stats but the only season he was top 5 (in la liga alone) was 2009/10 season when he was joint second.10/11 and 11/12 he was outside top 5. If you then consider other leagues in Europe, he likely was not even top 10 or 15. This is from whoscored.com.Messi, Ronaldinho, Robben, Ribery, Hazard, Neymar, Iniesta were better than him, maybe Kaká and Pato if we're being generous. And those players' peaks were distributed quite evenly over Cristiano's "dribbling prime" so that they were not all ahead of him. So I still think he was one of the best dribblers on the planet. Probably consistently top 5 or even 3 from 2006 to 2012 or so.
You are ignoring less successful/ less well known players who were better dribblers.
From my eye test, I'd say 06/07 and 09/10 were his best years interms of take-ons completed. For other seasons in his prime, I'd say probably top 15 or 20 in Europe.
But, obviously, better than the Nordic goal yeti.
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