The top 100 footballers in history according to statistics

By: Bob | November 6th, 2007

Everyone has an opinion about who is the best soccer player in the world today. Everyone also has an opinion on about the top players who ever played the game. Opinions are easy to come by, but sometimes you just need the cold, hard facts. The Association of Football Statisticians, presumably a collection of smart people who have come up with yet another way to get paid to study the sport, have compiled a list of the top 100 players in history based on fantasy football-like statistics.

Players are given points for goals scored, clean sheets for defenders and keepers, cups won, being captain and the level in which they played.

The result is, how does one put it nicely, absolute rubbish. Sure, they might be correct to have Pele at the top of the list, but my next door neighbor’s dog could have come up with that. But to put together a list of best players that doesn’t include George Best but does include Jan Koller, well that is just funny.

Here’s the top 25. I think we could all sit down over a few beers and come up with a better list.

1 Pele (Brazil)

2 Ronaldo (Brazil)

3 Romario (Brazil)

4 Luis Figo (Portugal)

5 Zinedine Zidane (France)

6 Diego Maradona (Argentina)

7 Lothar Matthaus (Germany)

8 Gerd Muller (Germany)

9 Franz Beckenbauer (Germany)

10Cafu (Brazil)

11Roberto Carlos (Brazil)

12Marco van Basten (Holland)

13Michel Platini (France)

14Rivaldo (Brazil)

15Paolo Maldini (Italy)

16Zico (Brazil)

17Raul (Spain)

18Ruud Gullit (Holland)

19Eusebio (Portugal)

20Ferenc Puskas (Hungary)

21Johan Cruyff (Holland)

22Alfredo di Stefano (Argentina)

23Bobby Charlton (England)

24Jurgen Klinsmann (Germany)

25Kenny Dalglish (Scotland)

Complete list

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Category: World Football

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Mohit

Hey where is fabio Cannavaro and Gianluigi buffon one of the best players from italy
luke

were's brian little?
javid

it's not that rubbish .
maybe you're too young but i remember when the super star ronaldo was at his best in 96 and 97 ,zidane was far behind him . ronaldo was a sweet memory of maradona . he gave life to football fans - at the time he was the most famous man in the world- , zidane was charismatic and great too . he was always a star but rarely a super star .
mele419

Crap, for the most part I'd say. There is no best player, plain and simple. Well, besides Pele. Other than that, no one can say who is better than who.
Musab

Hakan Sukur and Gheorghe Hagi in the mid 40's, I think thats reasonable.
JDJ

Where's Peter Schmeichel? The man was Denmark and 50% of Manchester United in the 1990's.
Laurie

I cry foul at Zidane being fifth! Under Figo AND Ronaldo, no less!!
Ian

I don't think it's complete rubbish, but its definitely a work in progress. Putting something like footballing skill, which is as much art as science, into numbers is always going to be a tough (or maybe pointless) thing to do.
Jon

Cruyff only at no. 21??! Ha ha... pull another one.
Thierry

Figo Romario, Ronaldo better than Zidane, really? I wonder sometimes if Pele was able to play in a first league nowadays, with the high physical level. In all list Garrincha is always forgotten unless for most of Brazilian he was better than Pele. And of course Arthur Friedenreich...
chris

And suddenly this list becomes Martha's gospel...

I'm assuming there was the formula to determine the true placement and then (n-75) if they don't speak Portuguese.
Martha

Figoooooooooooo!
James

Agreed.