Top 100 Greatest Ever Footballers

It’s that time of the year again. The time when a random (ok, let’s call it ‘well-respected’ if you prefer) football publication makes an “All Time Best” ranking that never fails to create controversy and offend a few people.

FourFourTwo did one of those last month, this time it’s the turn of the ‘Association of Football Statisticians’ to make its Top 100, after studying every fact and figure from the beautiful game over the past 100 years.

Points are given for goals scored by forwards and clean sheets for defenders. Players also get awarded marks for trophies won, captaincy and the level they played at throughout their career.

It should come as no big surprise to see Pelé at nº1 spot (the Brazilian legend totalling 16,799.44 points), but the names and rankings further down the list are bound to raise some eyebrows. The analysis of The Sun highlights the biggest problems in English Premiership terms:

• Manchester United legends George Best, Denis Law and Eric Cantona don’t make the top 100.
• Ali Daei‘s 109 goals in 149 games for Iran puts him at 26^th — ahead of players like Dennis Bergkamp, Thierry Henry and Ronaldinho.
• Diego Maradona is ranked only 6^th.

The publishers explain to The Sun that Best misses out because he never participated in a World Cup tournament, and had a fairly short career, while Ali Daei won his place by scoring 109 goals in 149 international matches for… Iran.

The Daily Star takes a look the UK players, and finds out that England’s top star is Bobby Charlton in 23^rd spot, two places above Scotland’s Kenny Dalglish. David Beckham is 44^th, Kevin Keegan at 46^th, Gary Lineker 56^th, Welsh ace Ryan Giggs 62^nd, and Michael Owen 68^th. Alan Shearer misses out of the top 100.

Further analysis of the ‘Best 100’ reveals that the top 3 trio is 100% Brazilian (with Ronaldo 2^nd and Romario 3^rd… and Cafu closing down the Auriverde block at 10^th). Figo is 4^th, Zidane 5^th, and other big names such as Platini (13^th), Maldini (15^th), Zico (16^th), Gullit (18^th) and Cruyff (21^st) are excluded from the Top 10.

TThe most represented nation is France (with 16 players), followed by Brazil (11), Italy and Germany (10). England totals 7, Argentina 5 (Messi not included).

Also, in terms of overall football career, the most represented European league is the Serie A. Indeed, most of the Top 100 players worked at one point or another in Italy: Serie A totals at least 58 players in that ranking, closely followed by La Liga (44), and the EPL (36). Other represented leagues include the Bundesliga (22), the French Ligue 1 (22), the Dutch Eredivisie (20), and the Portuguese Superliga (5). As for South America, the Campeonato Brasileiro counts 11 players while the Argentine Apertura/Clausura only 8 (most of the Brazilian/Argentine stars obviously beginning their career back home). An interesting note is the total of 13 players who played in the MLS/USL (mostly at the end of their careers), making North America the destination of choice for footballers close to retirement.

As for the Italians, aside from the aforementioned Paolo Maldini the remaining 9 players in the list are Paolo Rossi (43^rd), Alessandro Costacurta (49^th), Dino Zoff (51^st), Alessandro Del Piero (60^th), Demetrio Albertini (64^th), Giacinto Facchetti (75^th), Franco Baresi (77^th), Gianni Rivera (78^th) and Roberto Baggio (79^th).

The Top 100 is revealed in the book Greatest Ever Footballers, on sale next week by Headline publishers for £14.99 (€21.50).

Here’s the full list. Any thoughts?

1		Pelé	(Brazil)
2		Ronaldo	(Brazil)
3		Romário	(Brazil)
4		Luís Figo	(Portugal)
5		Zinedine Zidane	(France)
6		Diego Maradona	(Argentina)
7		Lothar Matthäus	(Germany)
8		Gerd Müller	(Germany)
9		Franz Beckenbauer	(Germany)
10		Cafu	(Brazil)

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Marco Pantanella writes on the mCalcio blog