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Preview data: all rankings, scores, votes, refresh labels, methodology, testing and editorial-process statements in Top 49 are illustrative demo content, not live measurements or documented reviews.
Sports
Soccer
The global game, club and country
Players, clubs and tournaments weighted across league strength, continental competition and international honours. Position-adjusted, so defenders and keepers are not buried under goal totals.
2Ranked lists
35Entries scored
526KReader votes
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Top 49 Footballers of All Time
A century of the world’s game, judged before the Ballon d’Or even existed
Rank 01
Lionel Messi
Soccer · Argentina · 2004–present
Eight Ballon d’Or awards, more than double anyone else’s total, and a 2022 World Cup final performance that closed the one gap left on his résumé. The Barcelona academy graduate who never needed to leave to prove anything, then left anyway and won it all again in Paris and Miami.
94.7/100 Top 49 scoreDiego Maradona
Soccer · Argentina · 1976–1997
Carried an otherwise ordinary Argentina side to the 1986 World Cup virtually alone, scoring the “Hand of God” and the “Goal of the Century” in the same match. Peak for peak, no one has taken over a tournament quite so completely.
93.4/100 Top 49 scoreRank 03
Pelé
Soccer · Brazil · 1956–1977
The only man to win three World Cups, the last of them as a 29-year-old anchoring Brazil’s 1970 side, arguably the finest team ever assembled. Statistics from the amateur-adjacent fixtures of his early career are disputed; the World Cup record is not.
92.5/100 Top 49 score
2 lists
Every Soccer ranking
Each list states its own criteria and cadence. Most recent data refresh: 1 Jul 2026.
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Top 49 rankings are editorial. Scores are produced from the published criteria on each list and are refreshed on the cadence stated there. Figures shown across this section are curated demonstration data.