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The Guardian 100 Best Male Footballers in the World is a list of the current best male footballers published annually by the British newspaper The Guardian. From its inception to 2017, it was known as The Guardian 100 Best Footballers in the World. It is decided by a panel of experts from several nations.
Pelé was the most famous footballer in the world during the 1966 World Cup in England, and Brazil fielded some world champions like Garrincha, Gilmar and Djalma Santos with the addition of other stars like Jairzinho, Tostão and Gérson, leading to high expectations for them. [93]
In 2010, the FIFA World Player of the Year award combined with the Ballon d'Or to create the FIFA Ballon d'Or in a six-year partnership. [3] FIFA presided over the FIFA Ballon d'Or after agreeing to pay £13million for the merge of the two major player awards with France Football.
According to France Football, he was the world's highest-paid footballer for five years out of six between 2009 and 2014, and was ranked the world's highest-paid athlete by Forbes in 2019 and 2022. Messi was among Time ' s 100 most influential people in the world in 2011, 2012, and 2023.
One of the world's most marketable and famous athletes, Ronaldo was ranked the world's highest-paid athlete by Forbes in 2016, 2017, 2023, and 2024 and the world's most famous athlete by ESPN from 2016 to 2019. He is the first footballer and the third sportsman to earn US$1 billion in his career.
Image credits: Rafal Oleksiewicz / Getty Images #2 Lionel Messi. Lionel Messi is yet another soccer player on this list. Like Ronaldo, the Argentinian megastar started his football career early on ...
A total of 471 players have been in the winning team in the World Cup. Brazil's Pelé is the only one to have won three times, while another 20 have won twice. Only players from Brazil and Italy, and one player from Argentina, have won the World Cup more than once. No player has won two World Cups both as captain.
Players in bold are still active at international level. Players in italics also hold the record for most caps for their nation. Rank is a count of the 211 FIFA nations. Fourteen nations (Azerbaijan, Bermuda, Brunei, Bulgaria, Denmark, Dominican Republic, East Timor, Faroe Islands, Puerto Rico, Romania, Scotland, South Sudan, United States and U.S. Virgin Islands) have a pair of players tied ...