Make the argument!

While I love receiving comments that exhibit some level of intelligent thought, the average comment that I receive goes something like this:

“UR dUMB. (Fill in the blank with an athlete) is a bum. (Fill in the blank with a different athlete) is a living, breathing god. HAHA. UR stoopid.”

Internet comment sections and message boards are often heavy on opinions and insults and light on facts and nuance. As compelling as it might be to let your inner Patrick Star loose, none of those things do anything to move the conversation forward and are better suited for the wall of a gas station bathroom stall in tandem with a phone number. Every spot on this list was earned by making the best possible argument for each player at each slot using statistics and degree-of-difficulty. The reason why Messi is ranked 1st is because I can make a better argument for him using statistics and degree-of-difficulty than I can for any other player on the list. That includes Pele. Nobody–including Pele–gets a spot by reputation. The argument has to justify the placement. 

Pele was a great player. Many people still consider him the GOAT. He is most famous for being the only player in history to win three World Cups. The problem is that in 1966–one of the years that he “won” the World Cup–he suffered an injury in the 2nd game and missed the rest of the tournament. Brazil not only won its group without him, it won the World Cup without him. This is where nuance matters. It’s easy to recite the “Pele is the only player to win 3 World Cups” line as if that’s the end-all, be-all to the argument. Instead, we see that Pele won 2 World Cups while playing for a country that was so stacked with talent that it won the World Cup even though he was too injured to play. Additionally, while Pele was the world’s top career goal scorer for a half century (some still consider him the unofficial king), his goals were scored against competition that Gerd Muller and Alfredo Di Stefano would’ve salivated over. 

Pele played for Santos FC in the Campeonato Paulista which is a state football league in Brazil. Brazil is home to 26 states. That means that while the best players in Europe were playing in the top-flight national leagues in Germany, England, Spain, Italy, and France, Pele was playing in a state league against comparatively weak competition. To exemplify how beneficial weak competition can be to inflating statistics, let’s consider the creation of the Bundesliga in 1963 from a collection of five sub-regional Oberligen (premier leagues) to an elite German national league. We’ll use legendary German striker Uwe Seeler to highlight this point. Seeler began playing for Hamburger SV in the Oberliga Nord in 1954. The Oberliga Nord was a German sub-regional league similar to what Pele’s Santos FC encountered in Brazil. Seeler feasted on the regional competition. In the 237 games that he suited up for Hamburger in the Oberliga Nord, Seeler scored 267 goals for a superhuman rate of 1.12 goals per game. In 1963, the five German sub-regional leagues (Oberliga Nord, Oberliga West, Oberliga Sudwest, Oberliga Sud, and Oberliga Berlin) combined to form a new national football system in Germany called the Bundesliga. Only the best clubs of the Oberligen were invited to participate in the new German national super league. Seeler’s Hamburger SV was one of the clubs invited to join the Bundesliga. In the 239 games that Seeler suited up for Hamburger SV after its move to the Bundesliga, he scored 137 goals for a relatively meager ratio of .57 goals per game. Seeler’s career was spent almost equally between a sub-regional league (237 games) and a national league (239 games) with vastly different performance outcomes. 

Similarly, German great Gerd Muller scored 33 goals in the Regionalliga Sud (formerly the Oberliga Sud) in just 26 appearances for Bayern Munich as a 19 year old. That amounts to a sizzling 1.27 goals per game. After one season with Bayern in a regional league, Muller saw his club promoted to the Bundesliga where his goals per game dropped precipitously to just .45 over 33 games. Seeler and Muller saw an immediate and significant reduction in their production as soon as their competition level spiked. The idea here isn’t to show that Pele’s Santos FC wasn’t a good club. It was. It’s also not to argue that Pele wasn’t a good player. He was world class. The point is that the level of Pele’s state league competition was well below that of the national leagues that existed in Europe or what a national league would’ve looked like in Brazil had one existed. 

Pele’s Santos FC had success in barnstorming tours of Europe, and Pele shined on the biggest stage over four World Cups. What Pele didn’t have to do was play against elite competition every night. This cannot be discounted and absolutely must be considered when determining Pele’s place in history. There is no question that the level of physicality at the highest levels of the sport is something that elite players must contend with. There is also no question that the talent and athleticism at the national level would have had better answers to Pele’s skill than what would be found in a state league. The most talent-filled competition that Pele ever played in was the World Cup. Despite his success, he was routinely injured–missing ⅓ of Brazil’s World Cup games–and saw his goals/game drop to .86 which was significantly below the 1.14 rate that he racked up in the Campeonato Paulista in Brazil. 

Pele was a world class footballer. He was the GOAT for a half century. He did all that he could do given what the landscape of soccer in Brazil looked like at that time. However, degree of difficulty matters and it is precisely why Messi and Ronaldo are the runaway choices for the top 2 spots on the all-time list. Pele is a worthy choice for the #3 position. Although, there is a compelling argument that Robert Lewandowski is just as worthy. Whichever side you fall, just make sure you make the argument using facts and logic. Nothing else moves the conversation forward.     

Goals über alles

Herm Edwards famously said, “You play to win the game!” While the sentiment is seemingly obvious, it’s important to remember the point of competition. If Edwards were a soccer coach instead of a football coach, he might have said, “You play to score goals.” Soccer is a beautiful game that calls for 11 players to work in unison to protect and advance one ball. Some of the greatest players the sport has ever seen like Pele, Johan Cruyff, and Andres Iniesta have been described as graceful and magical. Pundits and fans like to use words like “artistry” and “brilliance” to describe how a player looks aesthetically on the pitch. There is no question that certain players and teams are more graceful than others. However, it’s important not to lose sight that you play to score goals. A soccer goal is the rarest commodity in team sports. It’s never guaranteed, and oftentimes doesn’t come. The odds of winning a soccer game increase significantly with just a single goal. As much as it takes 11 footballers playing in harmony to protect, advance, and defend to win a football game, even more important is having someone to put the ball in the net at an elite rate. From the earliest stages of youth soccer all the way to the Premier League, goal scorers are in scarce supply. Within this context, it is important that unordinary goal scorers get precedent on this list. 

It is not uncommon to read or hear comments that disregard goal-scorers like Gerd Muller and Robert Lewandowksi in the all-time great conversations as “poachers” as if goal scoring is merely an afterthought to the beautiful game itself. The weird implication here is that putting the ball in the net is somehow the easiest skill instead of the most difficult. Of course, this idea is bananas. It doesn’t matter how ugly or displeasing it looks. It doesn’t matter if you think Iniesta has better foot skills or is more artistic on the pitch than Lewandowski. What matters is who impacts winning more and that answer is almost unequivocally the player who puts the ball in the net at an extraordinary rate, of which there are few.  Not every team has one of those, but those that do likely have the trophies to show for it. There is a reason that these players are paid the most and, in almost every scenario, are the hardest to replace. It is for these reasons that you will see players like Lewandwoski and Muller rated higher on this list than what the soccer zeitgeist seems to be willing to allow. It’s one thing to appreciate the artistry of soccer, but it’s just as important to remember why the game is played. You play to win the game, and you often win the game by scoring a single goal.

It’s complicated.

Putting together a list of the top 100 soccer players in history is not for the faint at heart. The factors that need to be considered dwarf that of other sports because of the murky competitive history of soccer as well as the sheer number of competitions that exist. Let’s tackle these separately, starting with the disparate experiences players and teams have had and continue to have across the sport. A good place to start is a good place to start any soccer conversation and that’s with Pele. Pele spent the majority of his soccer career playing in a state league in Brazil. For the record, there are 26 states in Brazil. Pele is the embodiment of a big fish in a small pond. Although, it might more accurately be portrayed as the biggest fish in the smallest pond. On the other side of the globe,  Pele’s international rival, Gerd Muller, played in the Bundesliga, Germany’s national league. Comparing these two very different experiences is virtually impossible. This was the case for much of the 20th century where the best players in the world were spread out all across the world. 

Towards the latter half of the 20th century, the best players in the world began to gravitate exclusively to the Big 5 domestic leagues in Europe. Just like the best basketball players in the world want to make it to the NBA in America, the best soccer players in the world want to make it to a Big 5 domestic league in Europe. However, instead of a single destination like there is for basketball, there are five destinations for soccer players. Serie A (Italian domestic league), The Premier League (English domestic league), La Liga (Spanish domestic league), The Bundesliga (German domestic league), and Ligue 1 (French domestic league) are essentially equivalent to having five NBAs (or 4.5 if you don’t think Ligue 1 quite fits the bill). This makes things rather dicey when comparing player accomplishments. In the NBA, Nikola Jokic and Giannis Antetokounmpo play against the exact same competition. Their performance levels can be compared directly to each other. Similarly, there is just one championship that they compete for and that’s the NBA Championship. This makes direct comparisons somewhat cut and dry. 

In soccer, Harry Kane, Kyllian Mbappe, Erling Haaland, Robert Lewandowski, and Lautaro Martinez could all win the equivalent of an NBA Championship in the same season by winning their respective domestic league trophies. They could also all be a domestic league scoring champion at the same time. Who’s to say how difficult it is to lead the Bundesliga in scoring versus, say, leading the Premier League in scoring? How should we weigh the competitive experience of a 38-game schedule against the unique collection of teams in the Bundesliga compared to a 34-game schedule against an entirely different slate of teams in Serie A? Whereas comparing players who played in the same era in the NBA is relatively easy, doing so in soccer is vastly more difficult, and that’s just comparing domestic league performance.

While comparing soccer players from the same era is fraught with a rubix cube of intricacies and comparing players from different eras is downright chaotic, that’s just if we stay in the realm of the regular season. Factoring in domestic cups (totally different from the domestic league schedule), continental cups, and international cups is like opening a 4th dimension. Let’s use Messi and Lewandowski’s 2014-2015 seasons to show how indirect these comparisons end up being.

Messi’s 2014-2015 season (July 1, 2014 – June 30, 2015)

38 La Liga games (Spanish domestic league)

4 World Cup games (World Cup with Argentina)

13 Champions League (Championship of the European domestic league winners)

3 Friendlies (Exhibition with Argentina)

6 Copa Del Rey (Spanish domestic cup)

5 Copa America (South American Championship with Argentina)

Lewandowski’s 2014-2015 season (July 1, 2014 – June 30, 2015)

31 Bundesliga games (German domestic league)

1 DFL – Supercup (German domestic cup)

5 DFB – Pokal (different German domestic cup)

6 UEFA Euro Qualifying (European Championship Qualifying with Poland) 

12 Champions League (Championship of the European domestic league winners)

 1 Friendly (Exhibition game with Poland)

Note that Messi and Lewandowski played 69 and 56 matches, respectively, in the 2014-2015 season and, given all of those matches, they played each other just twice (Barcelona and Bayern Munich split two matches in the Champions League) and had only two common opponents (Messi’s Argentina and Lewandwoski’s Poland each played Germany and Switzerland). That’s it! That’s what we have in terms of a direct comparison. That’s what we have to compare their respective brilliances. Keep in mind that it’s not just that Messi and Lewandowski don’t play each other, it’s that they don’t even remotely play equivalent competition.  Remember that in the NBA, all of Jokic and Antetokounmpo’s opponents are common opponents. If we’re comparing this to taking a test in school, Jokic and Antetokounmpo are taking the exact same test while Messi and Lewandowski are taking tests that feature none of the same questions in different course levels. 

A comparison like Messi to Cristiano Ronaldo is quite a bit easier since they faced each other in La Liga for nine seasons, but that sort of comparison is the exception rather than the rule with elite players scattered across 5 domestic leagues. With so much information and so little common points of comparison, the way forward is to simply create the best possible argument using statistics (relative to the league average) and degree of difficulty. Once you start doing this, the spine of a top-100 list starts to take shape. There is no doubt that if I restarted this list 100 times without the benefit of seeing the previous list, I’d end up with 100 different lists. There’s just too much minutiae to sift through. However, what’s important is that the relative achievements of players given their eras and their strength of competition makes sense as we descend down the list. I’m not concerned that some people view Xavi’s career as superior to Iniesta’s while others don’t. There is just as much room for subjectivity as there is objectivity in this exercise. The goal here is to give as accurate a snapshot as possible of the greatest resumes that exist in the sport. 

The Playoffs

Domestic league performance serves as a great base for building a strong soccer resume. Just like there’s major clout that comes from winning an NBA MVP or leading the NBA in scoring, leading a Big 5 domestic league in goals, goal contributions (goals + assists), or assists carries a lot of clout. However, much like the NBA, legends are built in the playoffs. This is where the highest level of soccer is played. Iconic performances against elite competition is the hallmark of a killer resume. Defining what the “playoffs” are in soccer is a bit tricky. While the domestic leagues don’t have a playoff like the NBA, each nation has a domestic playoff like the Copa Del Rey (Spain) or the DFB-Pokal (Germany). While these tournaments provide an opportunity to extract additional data points, elite resumes are not built in these competitions. The marquee playoff that mimics what happens in the NBA Playoffs/Finals is the UEFA Champions League (and to a lesser extent the UEFA Europa League) at the club level.

Although the World Cup and continental cups are great opportunities to leave a legacy, they only come around every four years, leaving the UEFA Champions League (UCL) as the de facto equivalent to the NBA Playoffs. The UCL is where the biggest stars play and it’s where legacies are forged. When looking through the top-100, you will see 100 uniquely created resumes. Some will include players who only had domestic league success like Hugo Sanchez. Sanchez led La Liga in scoring four consecutive years and five times overall. On the other hand, he had very little success internationally with Mexico. Some resumes will feature tremendous international success like Paolo Rossi or Mario Kempes. Rossi and Kempes led Italy and Argentina to World Cups, respectively. Both took home the Golden Boot (leading scorer at the World Cup) and the Golden Ball (best player at the World Cup) for their stellar play. However, Rossi and Kempes didn’t leave quite the same mark domestically. Sanchez, Rossi, and Kempes are examples of players who managed to put together top-100 resumes without achieving massive success in the UCL. They prove that it is quite possible to be one of the top-100 footballers without a complete resume. 

By and large, the players who show very well in the top-100 are players who had tremendous success in the UCL, in their domestic leagues, and on the international stage. Of the top-10 goal scorers in UCL history, all are rated in the top-70. The top three goal scorers in UCL history (Messi, Ronaldo, and Lewandowski) hold three of the top-4 positions on the top-100 list. Strong resumes can be put together through a combination of domestic league and/or international success (like Sanchez, Rossi, and Kempes), but the further you make your way up the list, the more likely you will find massive UCL success.     

Lewy “The Wonder Kid”

There is little question that Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are the two greatest footballers of all-time. Their accomplishments are in a different stratosphere than anyone who has ever played the game considering their competition level. Pele, of course, was a word-class player who was the long serving GOAT following his legendary exploits on the pitch in–and for–Brazil, but it’s difficult to compare Pele and the other great players of his era like Eusebio, Garrincha, and Alfredo Di Stefano to the juggernauts that are Messi and Ronaldo. Domestic league competition in the mid-20th century was considerably more diluted than what we see today. Pele did his cooking in a Brazilian state league, which is similar to LeBron James playing all of his games in the Mid-American Conference (MAC). 

While Pele’s star has been surpassed by the two mega-stars of this era, the player who joins Pele as Messi and Ronaldo’s closest galactic neighbor is Robert Lewandowski. There’s no question that Lewy is a known commodity in the soccer world, but his resume is much, much more historically significant than most probably realize. In fact, when it comes to doing things that had previously never been done before in a Big 5 domestic league, he’s the closest to Messi and Ronaldo that we have ever seen. 

The argument for Lewandowski is as easy as they come. He has led a Big 5 domestic league in goals a record eight times. Not even the great Cristiano Ronaldo can say the same. He scored at least 10 goals in three different UEFA Champions League seasons (UCL). Only Messi and Ronaldo have duplicated that feat. He scored 41 goals for Bayern in 2020-2021. Only Messi and Ronaldo scored more in a single Big 5 domestic league season. He scored 15 goals in the 2019-2020 UCL season. Only Ronaldo scored more in a UCL season. He scored at least 13 goals on two different occasions in the UCL. Only Ronaldo did it more often. Lewandowski has 94 career UCL goals. Only Messi and Ronaldo scored more. Lewandowski’s UCL goals per game ratio stands at .78. Among players with at least 50 UCL goals, only Messi has a better ratio. Lewandowski has 386 (and counting) Big 5 domestic league goals. Only Ronaldo and Messi have more. Lewandowski has 12 Big 5 domestic league seasons with at least 27 goal contributions (goals + assists) and 11 Big 5 domestic league seasons with at least 29 goal contributions. Only Messi and Ronaldo have more. He has five Big 5 domestic league seasons with at least 30 goals. Only Messi and Ronaldo have more. Lewandowski scored a hat trick in the UCL for three different clubs. Nobody has ever equaled that feat and it’s possible nobody ever will. Lewy has six UCL hat tricks. Only Messi and Ronaldo have more. 

Keep in mind that while Lewy’s Bayern Munich club never hurt for talent, he didn’t have the luxury of playing with Xavi, Iniesta, Luis Suarez, Neymar, and Mbappe like Messi did, or Benzema, Toni Kroos, Luka Modric, and a prime Gareth Bale like Ronaldo did. It’s not hard to imagine Lewandowski’s goal contributions inflating in a lineup featuring some of the greatest players the sport has ever seen. It’s also not hard to imagine his raw statistics inching even closer to the land of the absurd had he the benefit of a 38-game schedule like Messi and Ronaldo had in La Liga. The Bundesliga–where Lewandowski played for 12 seasons–is the only Big 5 domestic league that plays a 34-game schedule.     

It’s pretty clear that Lewandowski’s domestic league and Champions League production is more impressive than any non-Messi, non-Ronaldo footballer who has ever taken the pitch. Where he would appear to fall short are his contributions on the international stage, but looks can be deceiving. Lewandowski’s home country of Poland has not been an international force since the late 70s/early 80s. Poland’s typical roster looks nothing like the loaded rosters that Messi and Ronaldo have had the luxury of playing with for Argentina and Portugal, respectively. Messi has achieved massive acclaim for his country. He led Argentina to one of the great international runs as La Abiceleste (Argentina’s nickname) emerged victorious at both the 2021 and 2024 Copa Americas as well as the 2022 World Cup. Add in a 2nd place finish at the 2014 World Cup and Messi is clearly one of the great international performers of all-time. Ronaldo doesn’t have the trophy case to match Messi’s, but his international run with Portugal has been impressive in its own right. Ronaldo won the 2016 UEFA Euros, finished 2nd in 2004, and reached the semi-finals at both the 2006 World Cup and 2012 Euros. Ronaldo (130) and Messi (109) are, far and away, the top international goal scorers of all-time. 

However, given the talent advantages that Ronaldo and Messi have had with Portugal and Argentina, Lewandowski’s contributions with Poland should not be overlooked. Prior to Lewy joining the Polish National Team, Poland had qualified for the Euros just once in its history. Since 2012, Poland has qualified for four consecutive Euros including its best ever finish (5th) in 2016. Lewandowski also helped Poland qualify for back-to-back World Cups in ‘18 and ‘22 for only the second time since 1986. His 83 international goals are the 9th most in history.

It’s doubtful that Lewandowski will be universally recognized as a top-3 or top-5 player of all-time due to factors outside of his control. He doesn’t have the same marketability or name recognition as many of the great players of his era.  Poland is not a soccer powerhouse which means his status as a national icon is somewhat muted in a way that players like Messi, Ronaldo, and Mbappe will never be. The Bundesliga does not get the kind of attention that the Premier League or La Liga get (nor does it have a 38-game schedule). However, the numbers, accolades, and the degree of difficulty are there to justify his standing as the greatest non-Messi, non-Ronaldo footballer of the last 50 years.