Omar Sívori

Sívori was Argentine by birth, Italian by passport, and by temperament something football had not yet catalogued: a dribbler who treated defenders as a personal insult. Juventus broke the world transfer record to take him from River Plate in 1957, and he repaid them with three league titles and a style of provocation — the nutmeg as a signature, the humiliation as tactics. In 1961 he won the Ballon d'Or as a naturalised Italian, the award's first citizen of two football worlds.

The nickname from his Buenos Aires childhood stuck better than any trophy: The Atomic Flea, small and radioactive. He later coached Argentina with the same contempt for convention, and his verdicts on the game — that most tactics were cowardice organised — still read like heresy that happens to be true. The Ballon d'Or has honoured many elegant players; Sívori is the one it honoured for making elegance a weapon.