How The Independent’s ‘50 Greatest World Cup players’ was compiled

Today, The Independent launches its list of the ‘Greatest 50 players in World Cup history’ – just two weeks out from the 2026 World Cup starting in North America.

Conservative estimates are that more than 8,000 players have participated in the previous 22 editions of the men’s Fifa World Cup. As such, plucking out the top-50 has proved some task.

How much emphasis do you put on those who have won a World Cup? In total, 471 different players have been part of a World Cup-winning squad. Famously, Pele is the only player to have won the tournament three times, while 20 other players have won it twice.

Or is it all about that iconic World Cup moment? An inspirational performance, exceeding expectations and lighting up the world stage? To a point, World Cup moments are personal to oneself and thus interpretations varied amongst many.

Here’s how we compiled our top-50 list – with a full voting breakdown to be published on Thursday.

The specific criteria read: “The greatest players in World Cup history, who have starred in tournaments and played a key and perhaps historic role in certain/multiple events.”

In addition to that, we firmly stated that this is not simply a list of “the best players to feature in a World Cup.”

Whether judges placed importance on individual quality, historic records or team success was entirely up to them.

We asked 14 of our journalists to submit their top-30 greatest-ever World Cup players.

From that, a total of 80 players throughout the tournament’s 96-year history were listed. Then, it was over to our points formula.

The points formula was as follows: 50 points for players picked No 1, staggered down to 21 points for No 10, and then down to one point for No 30.

Then, all the points were added up and we had our top-50 list.

All will be revealed on Thursday, when the top-10 is published on our website.