Franz Beckenbauer

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• Top 6 Soccer Players of All Time

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• Pelé

  Pelé signed with Santos FC in Brazil at 15 and made his senior international debut for the Brazilian national team at 16, then became the youngest player ever to win a World Cup when Brazil claimed the 1958 tournament in Sweden — he was 17, and scored twice in the final against the host nation. He went on to win two more World Cups with Brazil, in 1962 (though injuries limited his playing time) and 1970, making him the only player in history to win three World Cup titles. The 1970 Brazil squad, built around a 29-year-old Pelé at his peak, is still widely cited as one of the greatest international teams ever assembled. Pelé's career goal totals depend heavily on how friendlies and exhibition matches are counted, but by Santos's own count he scored 1,279 goals in 1,363 career appearances, a figure that includes non-competitive matches and is often cited, with that caveat, as the clearest evidence of the rawest goal-scoring career the sport has produced. His 643 goals for Santos in official competitive matches alone still rank among the highest total for any player at a single club. Pelé retired from Santos in 1974, then played two more seasons for the New York Cosmos in the North American Soccer League, a move widely credited with meaningfully raising soccer's profile in the United States during the 1970s. FIFA named him Joint Player of the Century in 2000, an honor shared, somewhat controversially, with Diego Maradona.

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• Diego Maradona

  Diego Maradona made his professional debut for Argentinos Juniors at 15 and went on to play for Boca Juniors and Barcelona before his most famous stretch, seven seasons at Napoli, where he transformed a mid-table Italian club into two-time Serie A champions (1987 and 1990) — titles Napoli had never won before his arrival and wouldn't win again for more than three decades. His defining moment came at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, where he almost single-handedly carried Argentina to the title, scoring five goals and providing five assists across the tournament. The quarterfinal against England produced two of the most famous goals in World Cup history within four minutes of each other: the illegally handled "Hand of God" goal, and the "Goal of the Century," a 60-yard solo run past five England defenders. Maradona was named joint FIFA Player of the Century alongside Pelé in 2000, an award split between the two players after a disputed voting process — a fittingly contested honor for a career that combined genuinely transcendent skill with real off-field controversy, including a 15-month ban from the sport in 1991 after a positive cocaine test. Maradona's Napoli years are still commemorated in the city today — a mural of him remains a fixture of the Spanish Quarter, and the club's stadium was renamed Stadio Diego Armando Maradona after his death in 2020, a level of civic attachment that mirrors how completely his legacy is tied to a club he turned into a champion almost single-handedly.

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• Lionel Messi

  Lionel Messi joined Barcelona's youth academy, La Masia, at 13 after the club agreed to fund treatment for a growth hormone deficiency, and spent 21 seasons with the senior team, becoming its all-time leading scorer with 672 goals across all competitions before moving to Paris Saint-Germain in 2021 and later Inter Miami in 2023. Messi has won a record eight Ballon d'Or awards, the sport's most prestigious individual honor, more than double the total most other winners have managed across their careers. He won four UEFA Champions League titles with Barcelona and, after years of near-misses with the Argentine national team, finally won the 2022 World Cup in Qatar — a title widely described as the capstone that settled any remaining "greatest ever" debate for many fans and pundits. His 2011-12 club season remains one of the most statistically dominant in soccer history: 91 goals across all competitions for club and country, a calendar-year record that still stands. Messi has also won the Copa América with Argentina (2021) and led Barcelona to the treble — league, domestic cup, and Champions League — in both 2009 and 2015. Messi's game is built less around the physical dominance most elite forwards rely on — he's listed at 5-foot-7 — and more around close control, vision, and an unusually low center of gravity that made him difficult to dispossess even in tight spaces, a style that's sustained elite production across three separate decades rather than a single explosive peak.

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• Cristiano Ronaldo

  Cristiano Ronaldo left Sporting CP in Lisbon for Manchester United in 2003 at 18, then moved to Real Madrid in 2009 in what was then the most expensive transfer in soccer history, before later stints with Juventus, a return to Manchester United, and Al Nassr in Saudi Arabia — a career built across four countries and five clubs that's spanned more than two decades at the top level. Ronaldo has won five Ballon d'Or awards and is the UEFA Champions League's all-time leading scorer, with five Champions League titles across his time at United and Real Madrid. He is also, by FIFA's official count, international soccer's all-time leading goal scorer, having passed 130 goals for Portugal, a number no other national team player has come close to matching. His combination of goal totals and longevity is the core of his statistical case: Ronaldo is one of very few players to score 100-plus goals for three different clubs, and he's continued scoring at a high rate well into his late 30s, a level of physical conditioning and career maintenance widely credited to an exceptionally disciplined training and diet regimen. The Messi-Ronaldo rivalry, playing out across more than 15 years primarily through Barcelona-Real Madrid Clásico matches, is one of the defining storylines in modern soccer history — two players with genuinely different styles, Ronaldo's explosive athleticism and aerial ability against Messi's close control and vision, pushing each other to unprecedented individual numbers across the same era.

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• Johan Cruyff

  Johan Cruyff came through Ajax's youth system and became the on-field embodiment of "Total Football," a fluid tactical system pioneered by Ajax coach Rinus Michels in which outfield players could interchange positions seamlessly — a style that turned a mid-sized Dutch club into European champions three years running, 1971, 1972, and 1973. Cruyff won three Ballon d'Or awards (1971, 1973, 1974) and led the Netherlands to the 1974 World Cup final, where they lost to West Germany despite entering as favorites playing arguably the most influential brand of soccer the tournament had ever seen — a runner-up finish that's remembered as fondly in soccer history as many championship runs. He moved to Barcelona in 1973 for a then-world-record transfer fee and immediately helped the club win its first Spanish league title in 14 years. The "Cruyff Turn," a feint-and-drag move he used to beat a Swedish defender at the 1974 World Cup, remains one of the most widely taught individual skills in the sport today, still named after him five decades later. Cruyff's influence extended well past his playing career — he returned to coach Barcelona from 1988 to 1996, building the "Dream Team" that won the club's first European Cup in 1992 and laying the tactical and youth-development foundation that Barcelona's famous La Masia academy still runs on today, meaning his fingerprints are on both how the sport is played and how a generation of its best players were developed.

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More in Sports

• Robert Killian

  Robert Killian, a former U.S. Army Green Beret with more than 12 years of active service, won the Spartan Race World Championship in 2015 despite having just four races of OCR experience at the time, then won it again in 2019 for two career Spartan World titles. His path to obstacle racing ran through elite military and endurance competition rather than combat sports: he was a high school track star and collegiate runner who won the military division of the Ironman World Championship in Kona in 2009, was named Army Athlete of the Year in 2010, and won the grueling 68-hour Best Ranger Competition in 2016. At World's Toughest Mudder, Killian won the event three times and placed second overall (and first American) at the 2017 edition, completing 105 miles in 24 hours, one of the highest single-event distance totals recorded in the format's history. His combination of two Spartan World Championships and his background as a Best Ranger Competition champion and military Ironman world champion has made Killian one of the most distinctively credentialed competitors in obstacle course racing's history.

• Lindsay Webster

  Lindsay Webster won her first Spartan Race World Championship in 2017, then added titles in 2018, 2021, and 2022 — the 2022 win making her the first-ever four-time Spartan World Champion, male or female, at the time she achieved it. Along the way she set the sport's record for most consecutive Spartan wins with 17 in a row, and her 2021 title came alongside partner Ryan Atkins, who won the men's championship the same year in Abu Dhabi. Her combination of strong trail running speed and reliable execution on OCR's more technically demanding upper-body obstacles gave her a genuinely complete competitive profile that sustained her dominance across changing eras of the sport's growth. Her combination of a record four Spartan World Championships and her 17-race consecutive win streak has made Webster, by most accounts, the most decorated woman in obstacle course racing history.

• Hunter McIntyre

  Hunter McIntyre is a six-time obstacle course racing world champion by his own team's count, having first entered the sport almost by accident — he and a group of friends had loosely talked about doing a Spartan Race together, and he ended up the only one who actually finished it. He went on to become a three-time Hyrox World Champion as well, extending his competitive dominance into that separate hybrid fitness-racing discipline and becoming one of the few athletes to hold major titles in both OCR and Hyrox simultaneously. His path to elite athletic performance ran through bodybuilding and strength training before OCR, giving him a physical profile built for heavy carrying and climbing obstacles that distinguished him from more purely running-focused competitors, and his outspoken public persona helped introduce the sport to broader fitness audiences. His combination of six OCR world championships and his separate three-time Hyrox World Championship has made McIntyre one of the most recognizable and commercially significant figures across obstacle and hybrid fitness racing.

• Amelia Boone

  Amelia Boone, nicknamed "the Queen of Pain," won World's Toughest Mudder three times — in 2012, 2014, and 2015 — with her 2014 title coming just eight weeks after major knee surgery, a comeback timeline that became one of the defining stories of her career. She competed at an elite level while working full-time as a practicing corporate attorney, a combination that gave obstacle course racing a distinctive public profile well beyond its core competitive community during her prime. After shifting focus toward ultrarunning in 2016, Boone suffered a femoral stress fracture that put her on crutches for three months, then a cascading series of additional injuries — a sacral stress fracture, a fully displaced second metatarsal, and three separate heel stress fractures — totaling six bone stress injuries across three years. Her combination of three World's Toughest Mudder titles, including one won eight weeks post-surgery, and her later public account of recovering from six separate bone stress injuries has made Boone one of the most significant and candidly documented figures in obstacle racing's history.

• Ryan Atkins

  Ryan Atkins won the 2016 OCR World Championship in the 3km distance and later took the 2023 OCR World Championship Male 15K title, a span of major championships nearly a decade apart that reflects an unusually long competitive prime for the sport. He won the 2021 Spartan World Championship alongside partner Lindsay Webster, giving the Guelph, Ontario-based couple simultaneous titles in the same event and making them one of OCR's most publicly recognized competitive pairings before Webster went on to become the sport's most decorated woman. His background as a competitive adventure racer before focusing on obstacle course racing gave him a multi-discipline endurance foundation, and the OCR World Championships specifically returned to his home region of Collingwood, Ontario during his competitive prime, reflecting the sport's continued growth in the areas where its top athletes trained. His combination of OCR World Championships seven years apart and his 2021 Spartan World Championship alongside Lindsay Webster has made Atkins one of the most historically significant men's competitors in the sport.