bogard 5) Best football players of all time ranked

Best football players of all time ranked

It would still be an understatement to suggest that ranking the best football players of all time is the ultimate subjective endeavour in the history of subjective endeavours.

To compare a 21st century athlete to someone from the early 20th century is a virtually impossible task, in no small part down to the fact that very few people have lived to see all 10 players in our own list at their prime.

1: Lionel Messi

There's not a lot to be said that hasn't already been said about Lionel Messi, but I'm going to try.

We'll get the stats out of the way first. Messi has bagged 816 goals and 357 assists in 1,034 games for club and country. That works out at 73 minutes per goal contribution. Every 73 minutes. Over 20 years worth of matches.

Many elite players are figured out, they're sussed, they enjoy a few seasons in the sun before someone cracks the code and neutralises them. Not Messi; never Messi.

Messi has adapted throughout his career, mainly to accommodate his gentle deceleration, but the end product has always remained the same.

His touch is extraordinary, applying the correct weight to every delicate tap like a fine artist working on their masterpiece. The ball sticks to his feet, under his spell, and his measured passing ability is simply the greatest of all time. Nobody has or will ever split a defence quite like Lionel Messi.

2: Diego Maradona

Rarely is a player deified in the way Maradona has been by fans on both sides of the Atlantic. Argentina is awash with tributes to their greatest son, while the streets of Naples, Italy remain awash with Maradona-ism in response to their icon, their legend, their saint.

The diminutive Argentine forward boasted a low centre of gravity and the outrageous technical ability that could see him drift by players in unstoppable fashion. Maradona's intensity and direct running ability made him a menace for all who dared oppose him. This intensity not only struck fear into the hearts of opposition, but it emboldened teammates around him to raise their level, like an army general in the heat of battle.

3: Cristiano Ronaldo

To fully appreciate Ronaldo's greatness, you need to zoom out and not let his shambolic 2022 antics cloud your judgement of him. In time, once his career is all said and done, Cristiano will have more than earned his seat at the top table of all-time greats.

I know I said stats aren't everything, and trophies aren't everything, but when they are largely the result of one man, the most ferocious competitor in the history of football, they become incredibly difficult to ignore.

Ronaldo has lit up the Premier League, La Liga and Serie A, claiming each nation's domestic title and cup trophy. He boasts five Champions League titles across two teams and lifted the European Championship trophy with Portugal.

4: Pele

All of Brazilian football is geared towards embodying the spirit of Pele. Anything you've ever seen a Brazilian footballer do well, it is because Pele has done it before them. He is arguably the greatest ever player on the international stage with 77 goals for Brazil in just 92 games with three World Cups to his name.

Pele's legacy is an interesting one. There are those who scrunch up their faces at Pele's records, most particularly his claimed '1,281 goals in 1,363 games' line, when in fact a tranche of those games were exhibition showpieces against far weaker opposition.

However, his record excluding those games remains immense. He notched a reported 643 goals for Santos in 659 games across an 18-year spell before taking his talents to the US with New York Cosmos to wrap up his career.

5: Zinedine Zidane

If Ronaldo was the ultimate complete striker, Zidane goes down as the ultimate complete midfielder. The Frenchman boasted an unreal level of technical ability, with all the elegance and grace you wouldn't expect from a six-foot-one powerhouse.

His touch, as delicate at the grass he strode across, was otherworldly. His control over the ball, mesmeric. His ability to shift through the gears to convert an innocuous reception into the start of a blood-and-guts drive through the field has barely been replicated since.

Zidane will go down as one of the greatest dribblers of all time, but his intelligence on the ball added all the more threat to his attacks – he wasn't going to run out of road or ideas, he made clinical decisions with consistency, and the ball would find a teammate or the back of the net more often than not.

6: Johan Cruyff

Another revolutionary figure, Cruyff effectively lit the touch paper on 'tiki-taka football' almost 40 years before Pep Guardiola's Barcelona and the Spanish national team conquered the world with it between 2008-2014.

Cruyff was a conductor of the concept of 'Total Football' with Ajax, where he started his career and scored 257 goals in 329 games. The Dutchman openly admitted, long after retiring, that he felt many other players were more technically gifted, stronger, fitter, more powerful, but that his success as an individual boiled down to nailing his tactical designs.

7: Franz Beckenbauer

It's incredibly difficult to compare players in all areas of the field with one another, but Beckenbauer's quality, and versatility to play in a whole range of positions, makes him an easy selection for the list.

The German started life as a midfielder before dropping into the heart of the defence for Bayern Munich where he effectively invented the modern sweeper role. In an age of no-nonsense defending and route one, burly centre-backs, 5ft 11ins Beckenbauer was a revelation with the ball at his feet.

8: Alfredo Di Stefano

Di Stefano is widely regarded as the greatest player in Real Madrid's illustrious history. That is a staggering claim, considering the numerous golden ages the club has enjoyed, the Galacticos that have strode across the threshold of the Bernabeu and carved their names into the locals' hearts.

The striker was born in Argentina, and even represented them on six occasions before switching allegiances to Colombia (!) before finally settling on Spain, where he played shockingly few international games – just 31 caps with 23 goals to his name.

9: Ronaldo

Though Iniesta's career has been somewhat overshadowed by his supernatural teammate, Ronaldo's legacy has been criminally overlooked by his supernatural namesake.

R9 is one of the all-time top centre-forwards in football history, without doubt. In an era of wide forwards and false nines, it's easy to forget the impact of a world-beating, complete No.9.

Ronaldo was the face of a generation, the ultimate all-rounder, a player who transcended sport and became synonymous with greatness.

10: Andres Iniesta

Some players were simply born at the wrong time to dominate world football, and some of those absolutely maxed out their careers regardless.

In a world without Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, Iniesta would have scooped it all. The fact he didn't claim at least one Ballon d'Or in his fabled career is a tragedy.

We – and I include myself here – are increasingly obsessed with stats. Obscene goalscoring tallies and off-the-scale numbers of assists, but some players can't be measured by raw numbers alone. Football isn't played on a spreadsheet.

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