Best Soccer Players of All Time — Ranked

Pelé and Lionel Messi sit level at 99, the highest rating in Vikto and the only two cards at that number. Cristiano Ronaldo is a 98, Ronaldo R9 and Zinedine Zidane 97, Franz Beckenbauer 96. Below is the top twenty across every position, the method behind each number, and an honest account of who isn’t on it.

The top twenty

#	Legend	Pos	Score	Pool	Era
1	Pelé	ATT	99	Brazil	1957–1971
1	Lionel Messi	ATT	99	Barcelona	2004–2021
3	Cristiano Ronaldo	ATT	98	Real Madrid	2009–2018
4	Ronaldo R9	ATT	97	Brazil	1994–2006
4	Zinedine Zidane	MID	97	France	1994–2006
6	Franz Beckenbauer	DEF	96	Germany	1964–1977
6	Thierry Henry	ATT	96	Arsenal	1999–2007
6	Gerd Müller	ATT	96	Germany	1966–1974
6	Alfredo Di Stéfano	ATT	96	Real Madrid	1953–1964
6	Xavi Hernández	MID	96	Barcelona	1998–2015
6	Kylian Mbappé	ATT	96	PSG	2017–2024
12	Johan Cruyff	ATT	95	Barcelona	1973–1978
12	Garrincha	ATT	95	Brazil	1955–1966
12	George Best	ATT	95	Man United	1963–1974
12	Michel Platini	MID	95	France	1976–1987
12	Bobby Moore	DEF	95	England	1962–1973
12	Lothar Matthäus	MID	95	Germany	1980–2000
12	Andrés Iniesta	MID	95	Barcelona	2002–2018
12	Éric Cantona	ATT	95	Man United	1992–1997
12	Jean-Pierre Papin	ATT	95	Marseille	1986–1992

How the ranking works

Three components, 100 points, applied identically to a 1950s sweeper and a 2020s forward.

Honours, 40 points. Individual awards, club titles and international trophies, weighted by difficulty rather than count — a World Cup outranks a Champions League, which outranks a domestic league.

Impact, 40 points. Goals, assists, appearances and defensive contribution, normalised by position and era. This is what stops the list from being twenty strikers: a defender is measured against defenders.

Iconicity, 20 points. How far a name travels beyond the people who watched. It’s the component that separates Pelé from contemporaries with similar numbers, and the one that keeps Bobby Moore in the top twelve without a European Cup.

The very top of the scale is Icon tier, decided by community vote rather than by us. Icons carry a base-score boost and the larger multipliers when a match’s era or venue fits them.

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Why Pelé and Messi tie

Because the components disagree, and forcing a winner would mean weighting one of them arbitrarily.

Messi takes the honours column: eight Ballons d’Or against an era that had no equivalent award open to a South American until 1995, plus the 2022 World Cup that closed the last hole in his case. He takes impact on volume — 672 goals in 778 games for Barcelona alone.

Pelé takes iconicity outright, and holds three World Cups, which nobody else on this list has. His case is that he was the best player alive across three different tournaments spanning twelve years, in a sport that was far more physical about how it treated its best player.

So the ratings leave them level. In an actual match it resolves cleanly anyway: they’re in different pools and can never meet.

Who is the GOAT?

If you want one name rather than two, the honest tiebreak isn’t statistical, it’s about what you’re measuring.

Measure peak dominance over a single tournament and it’s Maradona in 1986 or Pelé in 1970. Measure sustained excellence across two decades and it’s Messi, comfortably. Measure influence on how the sport is played and it’s Cruyff, who doesn’t crack the top ten here because the system counts what was won, not what was changed.

Vikto’s answer is that the top of football history is a plateau, not a peak — six or seven players separated by two points, where the multiplier that decides a duel matters more than the base rating does.

Who is missing

The list covers the eleven pools currently in the game: seven clubs and four national teams. Several of the names you’d expect have no card yet, and pretending otherwise would make the ranking useless.

No Italian pool means no Paolo Maldini, no Franco Baresi, no Roberto Baggio. No Netherlands means no Marco van Basten, no Ruud Gullit. No Argentina means no Diego Maradona — the single biggest absence in the game, and the reason Maradona vs Messi is still a hypothetical.

Adding those pools would put at least four new names in this top twenty. The ranking is honest about the set it’s drawn from.

By position

The full breakdowns, each with twelve names and the reasoning behind every rating:

• Best strikers of all time — Pelé and Messi at 99
• Best midfielders of all time — Zidane at 97
• Best defenders of all time — Beckenbauer at 96
• Best wingers of all time — Garrincha and Best at 95

Settle the ranking in a match →

Frequently asked questions

Who is the best soccer player of all time?

Vikto rates Pelé and Messi level at 99, the highest cards in the game. Messi wins on honours, Pelé on iconicity and three World Cups.

Who is the GOAT of football?

There’s no single answer the components agree on. Messi for sustained excellence, Pelé for peak-era dominance, Maradona for a single tournament, Cruyff for influence.

Where is Maradona in the ranking?

Absent, because Argentina isn’t a pool yet. He’d enter at 98 or 99, Icon tier.

Are goalkeepers included?

No. Vikto rates outfield players only, so Yashin, Banks and Buffon have no cards.

How often do the ratings change?

Base scores are fixed for retired players. Active players — Mbappé, Modrić, Marquinhos — are reviewed as careers progress.

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More: Messi vs Ronaldo, Pelé vs Maradona, every pool on the legends hub.

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