I’m referring more to people attributing dribbling and ball control to ‘natural talent’, whilst they often attribute the skills of a high level midfielder to ‘hard work’. This is however not true I think.
I think therefore when choosing the best natural talent in football versatility is the best measure. Beckenbauer, along with great ball control, had a natural talent for all other elements of the game as well. He really was the ultimate complete footballer excelling in all aspects.
Yes, but even then, it wouldn't work because the players you referred to have consummate mastery of not just their skills but an intrinsic and fundamental understanding of the game that always, always gives them an age
before they even kick a ball. It's a rare player indeed who is relatively mindless as opposed to using their talent in perfect harmony with the environs in which they are performing. In that sense, ironically, it's Beckenbauer who becomes more obvious in aiding the laymen to understand the abnormality of what he's doing because it's so distinctly removed from the norm, whereas with the attacking players, a lot of the nuance is lost as we tend to focus more on the aspects of ball-handling you're referring to, and it is often, only with the aid of replays and frame by frame walkthroughs that we see the subtlety they have applied before all the wow stuff begins.
As I said before, Cruyff and Beckenbauer are eternally twinned basically as Yin and Yang and two sides of the same coin operating in different areas of the pitch. Beckenbauer's actual on the ball talent is just as absurd as the players you mention, why? Because through the lens of a defender or defensive player, he is still so far ahead of the next player down that it is an absurdity and his 'natural talent' has been the hardest for any other player to emulate because whilst there's been many contenders to greatest #9 or #10 of all-time, there hasn't ever been a direct challenger to Beckenbauer, not even close. But to my point with this paragraph: the aforementioned have always been twinned as the same, switched - how is Beckenbauer any more complete than Cruyff, for example? They are essentially renowned for doing the same thing on opposing sides of the halfway line, and what one can do on the other side, the other can do equally well.
'Completeness' in and of itself is a different discussion to what's being posed, and the likes of Gullit, Di Stefano and so forth then enter the fray.