The ten best football (soccer) players of all time

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There is no question that 'the beautiful game' has been blessed with some of the most glorious talent ever assembled in any sports, over the generations. Here are the ten best football (soccer) players of all time according to a consortium of ardent analysts and personalities in the game. 

The list allows many fans of the beautiful game to offer their own opinion and suggestions on the veracity of the rankings.

1) Edson Arantes do Nascimento - Pelé (Brazil) - RIP 

Peak: 1958-70   

Major Achievements: Most career goals (of any footballer ever, like ever), FIFA Player of the Century, France Football's greatest FIFA World Cup player, TIME 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century list, Brazil's all-time leading goal scorer, Santos' all-time leading goal scorer, youngest FIFA World Cup winner, most assists in FIFA World Cup history, 1958, 1962 & 1970 FIFA World Cup, top goal scorer in FIFA World Cup finals, two Copa Libertadores titles, six Campeonato Brasilerio Serie A titles, two Intercontinental Cups, 1970 FIFA World Cup Golden Ball, 1958 FIFA World Cup Best Young Player, 1970 Bola de Prata. There isn't really much that needs to be said here. Pele was simply the best and the only player that could have possibly eclipsed him from the premier position would have been Maradona, if the latter had won a second FIFA World Cup.



2) Diego Armando Maradona (Argentina) - RIP

Peak: 1985-90

Major Achievements: 90min's Greatest Footballer of All Time, Corriere dello Sport's Best Athlete in History, 1986 FIFA World Cup, 1986 FIFA World Cup Golden Ball, 1985 Serie A Footballer of the Year, FIFA World Cup All-Time Team, FIFA Goal of the Century, Argentine Sports Writers' Sportsman of the Century, two-time South American Footballer of the Year, four-time Argentine Football Writers' Footballer of the Year, two Scudetti, one Coppa Italia, one Copa del Rey, one UEFA Cup. The late Maradona was a football genius and took over a game like no other player did, probably not since the number one player on the list, Pelé.

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3) Zinedine Zidane - Zizzou (France and of Algerian descent)

Peak: 1997-2006

Major Achievements: 1998 Ballon d'Or, 1998, 2000 & 2003 FIFA World Player of the Year, 2002 UEFA Club Footballer of the Year, 2000/01 Serie A Footballer of the Year, UEFA Champions League Best Player of the Past 20 Years, L'Equipe Best French Player of All Time, 2006 FIFA World Cup Golden Ball, only player to be named Player of the Year in three of the top five leagues, most goals in FIFA World Cup finals, 1998 FIFA World Cup, 2000 UEFA European Championships, one Champions League, two Scudetti, one La Liga title, one Intercontinental Cup. Zizzou should have won two FIFA World Cups and the evidence of his genius was in taking an average and aging French side to the FIFA World Cup final in 2006, while eliminating a star-studded Brazil side in the process. Zizzou never lost to Brazil when it mattered and he was 2-0 against two of arguably the best Brazillian teams of all time, the 1998 and 2006 teams with stars like Rivaldo, Ronaldinho, Ronaldo ("O Fenômeno"), Roberot Carlos and Cafu, just to name a few.

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4) Johan Cryuff (Netherlands aka Holland)

Peak: 1971-75

Major Achievements: 1971, 1973 & 1975 Ballon d'Or, 1974 FIFA World Cup Golden Ball, FIFA World Cup All-Time Team, three-time Dutch Footballer of the Year, two-time Dutch Sportsman of the Year, three European Cups, one La Liga title, nine Eredivisie titles, one Copa del Rey, six KNVB Cup, one Intercontinental Cup. Johan Cryuff was 'Total Football' and he was the architect of modern football, as we know it.

5) Franz Beckenbauer (Germany aka West Germany)

Peak: 1966-76

Major Achievements: 1972 & 1976 Ballon d'Or, FIFA World Cup All-Time Team, 1966 FIFA World Cup Best Young Player Award, four-time German Footballer of the Year, 1974 FIFA World Cup, 1972 UEFA European Championships, three European Cups, five Bundesliga titles, four DFB-Pokals, one Intercontinental Cup. The Der Kaiser, as he is fondly called, won the FIFA World Cup as a player and also as a manager. He is also one of only two defenders to ever win the Ballon d'Or and he infact won it.

6) Ronaldo aka "O Fenômeno" (Brazil)

Peak: 1995-2002

Major Achievements: 1997 & 2002 Ballon d'Or, 1996, 1997 & 2002 FIFA World Player of the Year, 1998 FIFA World Cup Golden Ball, 2002 FIFA World Cup Golden Shoe, 1996/97 European Golden Shoe, 1994 & 2002 FIFA World Cup, 1997 & 1999 Copa America, two-time Pichichi winner, 1998 Serie A Footballer of the Year, two La Liga titles, one Copa del Rey, one KNVB Cup, one UEFA Cup, one Intercontinental Cup. Ronaldo easily could have become the greatest football player of all time, but his knees and overall lack of personal discipline, did him in. He was simply a joy to watch!

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7) Ronaldinho (Brazil)

Peak: 2002-06

Major Achievements: 2005 Ballon d'Or, 2004 & 2005 FIFA World Player of the Year, 2005/06 UEFA Club Footballer of the Year, 2004 & 2005 FIFPro World Player of the Year, one UEFA Champions League, two La Liga titles, one Scudetto. 2002 FIFA World Cup winner. Ronaldinho was one of the most gifted geniuses with the ball at his feet. He was exquisite to watch and played with so much joy that his passion seemed like par-for-the-course, even in the most energy-sapping of games. Just ask England in 2002 and they will tell you that no one 'smiled while killing you' with so much ease as Ronaldinho. 

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8) Alfredo Di Stéfano (Argentina)

Peak: 1956-62

Major Achievements: 1957 & 1959 Ballon d'Or, five European Cups, one Intercontinental Cup, eight La Liga titles, five-time Pichichi winner, World Team of the 20th Century, one Copa del Rey.

Alfredo Di Stéfano is considered by some to be the best player of all time, and many consider that he should be ranked above fellow Argentines Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi. Indelibly associated with the Real Madrid side that won 5 European Cups between 1956 and 1960, remarkably Di Stéfano did not even come to Europe until he was in his late 20s. It was during his time in Spain with Real that created his legend. In 11 seasons, in addition to the European Cup triumphs, he helped them win 8 league titles and the Copa del Rey, scoring 308 goals in 396 appearances for Los Blancos. His partnership with Ferenc Puskás became legendary, exemplified by the 1960 European Cup Final, where Di Stéfano scored a hat-trick, and the Hungarian four in the 7 – 3 defeat of Eintracht Frankfurt, still spoken of, nearly 60 years later, as one of the finest games of club football ever played. 

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9) Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal)

Peak: 2010-18

Major Achievements: 2008, 2013, 2014, 2016 & 2017 Ballon d'Or, 2008, 2016 & 2017 FIFA World Player of the Year, 2014, 2016 & 2017 UEFA Best Player in Europe Award, four-time European Golden Shoe winner, two-time PFA Players' Player of the Year, UEFA Champions League all time top goal scorer, Real Madrid's all time top goal scorer, five UEFA Champions Leagues, two La Liga titles, three Premier League titles, one Scudetto, two Copa del Rey, one FA Cup, one UEFA European Championship and inaugural UEFA Nations League Championship.

10) Lionel Messi (Argentina)

Peak: 2009-18; 2021-2022

Major Achievements: 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2019 & 2021 Ballon d'Or, 2009 FIFA World Player of the Year. 2021 Copa America and 2022 FIFA World Cup winner. Barcelona all time top goal scorer, La Liga all time top goal scorer, six-time Pichichi winner, Argentina's all time top goal scorer, most goals scored in a calendar year, 2011 & 2015 UEFA Men's Player of the Year, seven-time La Liga Player of the Year, 2014 FIFA World Cup Golden Ball, 2005 Young European Footballer of the Year, five-time European Golden Shoe winner, four Champions Leagues, nine La Liga titles, six Copa del Rey. 

African-Americans Who Served in WWII Faced Segregation Abroad and at Home

Photograph by David E. Scherman / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty

CC™ Histofact 

Some 1.2 million African-American men served in the U.S. military during the war, but they were often treated as second-class citizens. 

When the Selective Training and Service Act became the nation’s first peacetime draft law in September 1940, civil rights leaders pressured President Franklin D. Roosevelt to allow Black men the opportunity to register and serve in integrated regiments. 

Although African-Americans had participated in every conflict since the Revolutionary War, they had done so segregated, and FDR appointee Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War, was not interested in changing the status quo. With a need to shore up the U.S. Armed Forces as war intensified in Europe, FDR decided that Black men could register for the draft, but they would remain segregated and the military would determine the proportion of Blacks inducted into the service.

The compromise represented the paradoxical experience that befell the 1.2 million African- American men who served in World War II: They fought for democracy overseas while being treated like second-class citizens by their own country.

Despite African-American soldiers' eagerness to fight in World War II, the same Jim Crow discrimination in society was practiced in every branch of the armed forces. Many of the bases and training facilities were located in the South, in addition to the largest military installation for Black soldiers, Fort Huachuca, located in Arizona. Regardless of the region, at all the bases there were separate blood banks, hospitals or wards, medical staff, barracks and recreational facilities for Black soldiers. And white soldiers and local white residents routinely slurred and harassed them.

“The experience was very dispiriting for a lot of Black soldiers,” says Matthew Delmont, a history professor at Dartmouth College and author of Black Quotidian: Everyday History in African-American Newspapers. “The kind of treatment they received by white officers in army bases in the United States was horrendous. They described being in slave-like conditions and being treated like animals. They were called racial epithets quite regularly and just not afforded respect either as soldiers or human beings.”

Because the military didn’t think African-Americans were fit for combat or leadership positions, they were mostly relegated to labor and service units. Working as cooks and mechanics, building roads and ditches, and unloading supplies from trucks and airplanes were common tasks for Black soldiers. And for the few who did make officer rank, they could only lead other Black men.

As Christopher Paul Moore wrote in his book, Fighting for America: Black Soldiers—The Unsung Heroes of World War II, “Black Americans carrying weapons, either as infantry, tank corps, or as pilots, was simply an unthinkable notion…More acceptable to southern politicians and much of the military command was the use of black soldiers in support positions, as noncombatants or laborers.”

African-American soldiers regularly reported their mistreatment to the Black press and to the NAACP, pleading for the right to fight on the front lines alongside white soldiers.

“The Black press was quite successful in terms of advocating for Blacks soldiers in World War II,” says Delmont. “They point out the hypocrisy of fighting a war that was theoretically about democracy, at the same time having a racially segregated army.”

In 1942, the Black newspaper, the Pittsburgh Courier—in response to a letter to the editor by James G. Thompson, a 26-year-old Black soldier, in which he wrote, “Should I sacrifice my life to live half American?"—launched the Double V Campaign. The slogan, which stood for a victory for democracy overseas and a victory against racism in America, was touted by Black journalists and activists to rally support for equality for African-Americans. The campaign highlighted the contributions the soldiers made in the war effort and exposed the discrimination that Black soldiers endured while fighting for liberties that African Americans themselves didn’t have.

As casualties mounted among white soldiers toward the final year of the war, the military had to utilize African-Americans as infantrymen, officers, tankers and pilots, in addition to remaining invaluable in supply divisions. 

From August 1944 to November 1944, the Red Ball Express, a unit of mostly Black drivers delivered gasoline, ammunition, food, mechanical parts and medical supplies to General George Patton’s Third Army in France, driving up to 400 miles on narrow roads in the dead of night without headlights to avoid detection by the Germans.

The 761 Tank Battalion, became the first Black division to see ground combat in Europe, joining Patton’s Third Army in France in November 1944. The men helped liberate 30 towns under Nazi control and spent 183 days in combat, including in the Battle of the Bulge. The Tuskegee Airmen, the all-Black fighter pilot group trained at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, escorted bombers over Italy and Sicily, flying 1600 combat missions and destroying 237 German aircraft on ground and 37 in air.

“Without these crucial roles that Blacks soldiers were playing, the American military wouldn’t have been the same fighting force it was,” says Delmont. “That was a perspective you didn’t see much in the white press.”

After World War II officially ended on September 2, 1945, Black soldiers returned home to the United States facing violent white mobs of those who resented African Americans in uniform and perceived them as a threat to the social order of Jim Crow.

In addition to racial violence, Black soldiers were often denied benefits guaranteed under the G.I. Bill, the sweeping legislation that provided tuition assistance, job placement, and home and business loans to veterans. 

As civil rights activists continued to emphasize America’s hypocrisy as a democratic nation with a Jim Crow army, and Southern politicians stood firmly against full racial equality for Blacks, President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981 that desegregated the U.S. Armed Forces in July 1948. Full integration, however, would not occur until the Korean War.

BY

 ALEXIS CLARK

Alexis Clark is the author of Enemies in Love: A German POW, A Black Nurse, and an Unlikely Romance, and an adjunct professor at Columbia Journalism School. Previously an editor at Town & Country, she has written for The New York Times, Smithsonian, NBC News Digital, and other publications.  as second-class citizens.Some 1.2 million Blathewar, but they were often treated as second-class citizens.

HISTORY.COM

I am going to WIN

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Victor Osimhen to miss Nigeria’s crucial game against South Africa

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Having picked up yet another avoidable injury in the team’s last match against Rwanda, Victor Osimhen will miss yet another crucial World Cup qualifier, this time against South Africa. And regarding Samson SiaSia’s claims that the Rwandan players set out to injure Osimhen, that is utter balderdash as the injury was in fact due to an overexertion by Osimhen himself on the particular play.

The best ability is availability. Victor Osimhen has been absent from majority of the Super Eagles World Cup qualifiers. It’s the same thing with him at the club level where he is never fully available for the full duration of games. 

While there is no doubting his ability and commitment to the national team, Nigeria is too blessed with talent,  both raw and developed, to continually depend on one player. This is an opportunity for the likes of Dessers and co to lay claim to their own place in the team.

Osimhen has got to adapt his game to reach his full potential. His injuries are mostly avoidable. He has also not developed the requisite football IQ expected of a world class center forward, such as holding the line just right and not being offside at crucial moments. He must also become a true leader. Leadership does not depend on how vocal or loud you are. In fact, the most effective leaders hardly say a thing. They just lead by example with their conduct, dedication and strong sense of personal discipline and requisite self awareness. 

Nigeria should beat South Africa with or without Osimhen as the onus is on the coach and the FA to find the right solution to this hick-up. The talent is there. Take politics out of it and have a plan-of-action.

Nigeria - The sleeping giant in need of a monumental jolt

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Visiting the US is about to get even more expensive for foreign travellers

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By Jeanne Bonner 

Visitors to the US from some of the nation’s closest allies will soon be required to pay higher fees outlined in the Trump administration’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” Specifically, a hike to the fees associated with the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, which processes travel applications from residents of more than 40 countries that are part of the Visa Waiver Program.

Those countries include the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Israel and most of Europe, as well as a handful of countries in other regions, including Qatar in the Middle East.

Prior to the passage of President Trump’s signature legislation, applicants to the ESTA system, as it’s known, paid $21. Now that mandatory fee will nearly double on September 30 to $40.

It’s one of several fee increases associated with travel to the US from abroad. Travelers arriving through a land border will also see their fees go up with an increase in the I-94 Arrival/Departure Record cost. Right now, travelers required to pay the fee only have to part with $6.
That amount jumps to $30 at the end of the month.

Lastly, travelers from China will be asked to pay a $30 enrollment fee for the Electronic Visa Update System. The September 30 effective date for the fee increases was outlined in a recent notice in the Federal Register.

The increase in fees, combined with the looming $250 “visa integrity fee” for many travelers from non-visa waiver countries, comes at a time when travel to the US from abroad is in a major slump.

Already many Canadians and other international visitors to the US are staying away. The World Travel and Tourism Council projected in May that the United States will lose $12.5 billion in international visitor spending in 2025. It was the only country out of 184 economies analyzed by the council, a global tourism advocacy organization, that will see a decline this year.

The new visa integrity fee has not yet been applied. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security repeated to CNN that it “requires cross-agency coordination before implementation.”

Houston-based immigration attorney Steven Brown said he didn’t think the increase in fees will be much of a “hindrance” for most travelers. But he said the visa integrity fee is an entirely new thing.

“It will be intriguing to see because lots of questions are out there,” he told a reporter. “So we pay the fee, but how does it get refunded? Who is tracking compliance? How do you prove compliance?”

CNN

Burkina Faso arrests French head of NGO for spying

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By Staff

The French head of an NGO in Burkina Faso specialising in humanitarian safety was arrested in Ouagadougou at the end of July on suspicion of spying, sources said Wednesday, confirming a media report.

Burkina Faso’s military junta has turned away from the West and, in particular, former colonial master France since it seized power in a September 2022 coup.

Security experts contacted by AFP said the French national, who is the country leader for the INSO organisation in the West African state, was accused of espionage.

He is “well treated” and his organisation is in contact with Burkinabe authorities to secure his release, a source said.

INSO, based in the Netherlands, provides security analyses for other humanitarian organisations.

It was suspended for three months on July 31 by Burkina Faso’s authorities for “collecting sensitive data without prior authorisation”.

The military authorities have not released a statement on the arrest of the French national.

In one month between June and July, the junta revoked the operating permits of 21 NGOs and suspended 10 other associations for three months.

Burkinabe authorities often repress dissent, notably within civil society and the media, claiming it as part of the battle against jihadist violence that has plagued the country for a decade.

The junta regularly says it has thwarted “destabilisation attempts”.

Four French civil servants accused of espionage were detained for a year in the capital Ouagadougou before their release last December following mediation by Morocco.