[eXecutioner]

Hi guys i dont know if anyone here has tried but i decided to rank all these legendary players according to their greatness. By greatness i mean their ability to lead their team to championships as well playing a long career and personal achievements. The system i came up with gives points based upon total number of caps, goals, personal hardware, and team championships these players accumulated throughout their career. I wanted to use a scientific/mathematical formula to rank these players to see who is actually overrated/underrated. To keep it fair so that all players can be compared i divided them into 4 obvious categorizes: goalkeepers, defenders, midfielders, and strikers. The only thing that separates these categories is the points they receive per goal. So here is how i ranked them:

ACHIEVEMENT POINTS
Club Caps

1

Country Caps

3

World Cup Caps

5

Domestic Championships

40

Club Continental Champs.

70

Club Intercontinental Champs.

80

Country Continental Champs.

150

Country Intercontinental Champs.

150

World Cup Champs.

300

World Cup Golden Boot

100

World Cup Golden Ball

100

World Cup All-Star

50

International Golden Boot

100

International Player of Year

100

Domestic Player of Year

50

Domestic Golden Boot

50

More goals than caps

2/+goal

for Goalkeepers
World Cup Clean Sheet

8

Goal (all goals treated the same)

12

for Defenders
Club Goal

8

Country Goal

10

World Cup Goal

12

for Midfielders
Club Goal

4

Country Goal

6

World Cup Goal

10

for Striekrs
Club Goal

2

Country Goal

4

World Cup Goal

8

Right off the bat there are some obvious short-comings to this system. Not all information is available about all the players which may skew the actual ranking. This is true, but for most of the well-known players from each country enough information is available to make this a viable system. Also this system focuses on the ability of the player to win anything and does not take into context the team that was around the player or rank the competitions. Championships are categorized according to domestic, continental, and intercontinental for both club and nation. I am not interested in ranking the championships which play on the same level, for instance a Copa America is weighed the same as an European Championship because their are both continental. I did this to keep the playing field level for players who played at big clubs and ones who were stuck at small clubs.

The emphasis is on winning. The players who won more championships and trophies are considered "greater" than the ones with lots of ability or great statistics. That is why a player like Pele is considered the greatest ever because he not only had a long career, many goals, but the winning of 32 team championships put him way over the top of other players like Di Stefano who many individual awards and had great statistics.

So here are the results of the 24 players i have already done. Please posts your suggestions as to how this can be improved and also your comments on the idea and try it yourself to see where your favorite player ranks. I realize this might not be the most accurate way to rank these players but its worth a shot.


Rank Country Name Position Total Points
1 Brazil Pele ST

5,601

2 Brazil Zico M

5,470

3 Argentina Maradona M

4,786

4 Arg./Spain Di Stefano ST

4,486

5 W. Germany Gerd Muller ST

4,416

6 Portugal Eusebio ST

4,289

7 Netherlands Cruyff M

3,954

8 Hungary Puskas ST

3,839

9 W. Germany Matthaus M

3,836

10 France Platini M

3,718

11 W. Germany Beckenbauer D

3,677

12 England Bobby Charlton M

3,547

13 Italy Maldini D

3,530

14 Brazil Ronaldo ST

3,369

15 France Zidane M

3,302

16 Brazil Garrincha ST

2,891

17 Hungary Kocsis ST

2,746

18 Argentina Passarella D

2,603

19 Netherlands Rijkaard M

2,397

20 Brazil Didi M

2,228

21 England Bobby Moore D

2,181

22 N. Ireland George Best M

2,110

23 Italy Baresi D

2,043

24 Netherlands Krol D

1,952

I started with Maradona and Pele first and i wasn't at all surprised with the results until i did one of the last ones which was Zico. When the numbers added all up i was shocked he knocked Maradona out of 2nd place.
I got most of the statistical information from player profiles shared on this forum, Wikipedia, PlanetWorldCup and of course googled any other various info i needed. I am going to do more players and i guess we'll see if there are any more surprises. Post the ones you did and i will add them.

[milivella]

Hi eXecutioner, your ranking system is interesting. However, I think it has some flaws:

1. You use subjective judgments. Subjective awards (golden ball, all star, player of the year), but so you're using rankings to produce a ranking. And subjective judgments about positions, but many players are between midfielders and strikers.
2. I bet that, when you'll compute more players, not-so-great players will be ahead of great players.
3. You can't be sure that you have the definitive - let's say - top 10 until you have computed hundreds of players.
4. Domestic championships should have different weights (you are aware of this): it's not the same to win a title in Italy or in Japan.
5. As you say, "[this system] does not take into context the team that was around the player"

I have elaborated a different method that doesn't have these problems. I'll give a quick description of it, then I'll write down the ranking it produces for the years 1958-1994, and finally I'll show why my method overcomes the flaws of your system.

Here is the method:

1. Points to a team

• 4 points to the national team that, at the end of the World Cup, is 1st in the Elo ranking.
• 2 points to the national team that wins the European Cup, only if it, at the end of the competition, is 1st in the (world) Elo ranking.
• 1 point to the club team that wins the European Champions Cup.

2. Team's points to a player (or two)

• First of all, compute who is the player with more titles in his career, assigning 4x to WC win, 2x to WC final and EC/CA, 1x to WC semifnal and ECC. If more than one player have the same titles, pick the player who scored more goals in his career.
• Then, if this is not the top scorer of the team, give 2/3 of the team's points to him, and 1/3 to the top scorer.
• Otherwise, give all the points to the top scorer.

Here is the ranking computed by this method:
1. Pele (8 points)
2. Beckenbauer (6)
3. Di Stefano (5)
4.-8. Garrincha, Maradona, Puskas, Rivelino, Zico (4)
9. R.Charlton (3.7)
10.-12. Cruijff, Muller, Platini (3)
13.-15. Neal, Matthaus, Van Basten (2.7)

And now, let's see if this method has the same flaws of yours:

1. There is no subjective judgment, only objective data.
2. There is no not-so-great player other than Neal.
3. The complete top 15 ranking is computed in minutes.
4. [I consider only the top competition for every level: world, continent (national teams) and continent (club).]
5. A player can win two world cups but still have no points, if a teammate is more important.

Still, I think your method is better than mine in some aspects:

• My method only works for the top 15-20 players all-time, yours could be used for thousands of players.
• My method can't be used in "real time" (I can't rank players after 1994, because they're still active), while yours can give an up-to-date ranking.

So, I hope you'll improve your interesting method. If I'll have some ideas that could help you, be sure I'll write them down

[Cirdan]

Romario should be pretty high on that list, should have nearly 2000 pts on goals and matches alone, his assorted trophys should also be worth another 1500 pts or so... might even break into your top 10. But I'm too lazy now to exactly figure out which of his goals should count how many points and which titles are worth something

for goals, see also:

http://www.rsssf.com/players/prolific.html#romario

[Catel]

Hadn't Zidane been injured in 2002, he'd be ranked much higher... !

[eXecutioner]

great stuff milivella, like i said i am trying to make the playing field even for everyone so that the players can all be compared. Even still its going to be hard to compare a great goalkeeper with a great striker because there are just so many more ways for a striker to earn points than a goalkeeper. I've considered uping the points give per cap to a goallie but then i thought about it and it doesn't make sense because a all players get the same opportunity with their cap/game. It's incredibily hard to devise a system where all players have a fair shot, that is why i did not place value on goals and much more value on awards and championships.

Ranking championships from Italy higher than ones from Japan might seem like a good idea but that again is a judgement call. In my eyes, for the purpose of this, i wanted to rank all championships the same if they played on the same level (domestic, continental, intercont.). Think about it, would it not be unfair for the great players, like some Eastern European players, that were not allowed to leave their country to play abroad? Why should they only get 2 points for winning their championships when a Western European player gets 4 for winning their domestic championship? Is it their fault that they won everything they could? No of course not. Same thing with cups. Where do you even begin to compare and rank cups? In the early 40's-60's Europe and Brazil constantly changed the names of their tournaments, its insane trying to figure out which one was tougher than the other. Anyway you made some good points and i will deffinately try to come up with a way to make even more fair for goalkeepers and defenders to make it to the top of list if they deserve it.

[Teso Dos Bichos]

Originally Posted by Catel

Hadn't Zidane been injured in 2002, he'd be ranked much higher... !

Any best player ranking that includes Zidane within the top 250 or so players is ultimately flawed.

[phil80]

Originally Posted by Teso Dos Bichos

Any best player ranking that includes Zidane within the top 250 or so players is ultimately flawed.

Alright this takes the cake for the most ridiculous thing that i've ever read on BigSoccer.

[Twix]

Originally Posted by Teso Dos Bichos

Any best player ranking that includes Zidane within the top 250 or so players is ultimately flawed.

I can totally understand him not making the top 50 but 250?

Come on, man. I think even you would struggle to back that up.

[phil80]

Originally Posted by MrTwix69

I can totally understand him not making the top 50 but 250?

Come on, man. I think even you would struggle to back that up.

He can't, his player rankings are so bias, he has lost the ability to rate accurately.

[eXecutioner]

Originally Posted by Teso Dos Bichos

Any best player ranking that includes Zidane within the top 250 or so players is ultimately flawed.

well now i agree he is a bit overrated especially when he won the 50 greatest in 50 years, but to say that he is not on the top 250 in anything is absolutely a ridiculous statement. You know considering there have been less than 250 players to ever score a goal in a World Cup Final game...