which countries' greatest athlete or athletes are footballers?

Bud Greenspan was an American film writer/producer who specialized in sports documentaries

Back around 1980 he wrote a book along with a mini-series called Numero Uno:

"In every country of the world there is a legendary sports hero. Athletes whose exploits are revered from generation to generation... timeless, universal, immortal. They are Numero Uno."

The series celebrated sportsmen from 13 different countries.
Only 1 was a footballer.

Roger Bannister (athletics, England)
Franz Beckenbauer (football, Germany)
Klaus Dibiasi (diving, Italy)
Juan Manuel Fangio (auto racing, Argentina)
Veikko Hakulinen (cross-country skiing, Finland)
Jean-Claude Killy (alpine skiing, France)
Eddy Merckx (cycling, Belgium)
Al Oerter (track and field, United States)
Murray Rose (swimming, Australia)
Peter Snell (middle distance running, New Zealand)
Gary Sobers (cricket, Barbados)
Irena Szwinska (sprinting, Poland)
Taihō Kōki (sumo wrestling, Japan)

 

Brazil seems fairly straightforward for me, Pele ahead of Senna.

Germany's a tough one to pick between Graf, Schumacher or Beckenbauer.

personally i'd have Gerd Mueller on the same rung as Beckenbauer but dont think he gets the same appreciation internationally.

if going sheerly by popularity, Boris Becker was absolutely huge in Germany in 80's 90's...ditto the East German figure skater Katarina Witt.


for Italy, i'm not really sure who most Italians would regard as their greatest ever player.
Maldini seems to get a lot of love but i always considered Baresi the better player.
then you have Meazza, Zoff, Baggio, Buffon...can't really see a clear consensus as to who is their footballing goat.

 

Murray Rose was a great swimmer but i think Australia's sporting GOAT would be between the tennis greats Rod Laver & Margeret Court or the cricketer Don Bradman.

Peter Snell the New Zealand Runner would have strong competittion from the Rugby player Jonah Lomu.

as for the American pick i'd say most would go with Ali or Jordan.
my own personal favourite would be Joe Montana

 

I would think
Brazil: Pele
Argentina: Maradona
Germany: Michael Schumacher
Portugal: Cristiano Ronaldo
USA: Michael Jordan
Belgium: Eddy Merckx
Hungary: Puskas?
Italy: Maldini as greatest footballer at least
Norway: probably Haaland already. Bjørndalen, biathlon, is another option, or Bjørn Dæhlie, cross country skiing.
Sweden: Björn Borg, I guess
Finland: Matti Nykänen maybe (ski jumping)
Denmark: I'm just guessing Michael Laudrup. (Vingegaard, cycling, could be in future maybe)
Spain: Rafel Nadal, I guess.
Switzerland: Roger Federer
Serbia: Novak Djoković
Croatia: Luka Modrić? (he has been unpopular at times)
Russia: Yashin? Best I could think of (Garry Kasparov if chess counts, I guess)
Netherlands: Johan Cruyff, I would think.
England: Bobby Moore?
France: Zidane? (Bernard Hinault?)
N. Ireland: Rory McIlroy
Scotland: Kenny Dalglish?
Wales: Gareth Bale?
Mexico: Hugo Sanchez?
Canada: Wayne Gretzky
Ivory Coast: Drogba
Egypt: Salah?
Cuba: Sotomayor
Costa Rica: Keylor Navas?
Chile: Elias Figueroa?
Cameroon: Eto'o

 

Jordan isn't even the GOAT in Basket anymore. LeBron is clear. What's more, there's also Tom Braddy as a candidate for greatest athlete of USA

 

Julio Cesar Chavez

 

For France, I'd probably go with Teddy Riner ahead of athletes like Anquetil, Killy, Hinault, Prost, Douillet and Marie-José Pérec.

Speaking of collective sports only: Nikola Karabatic (handball) is the clear number one in my mind, ahead of Platini, Zidane, Tony Parker...

 

Adding some more names:
Jamaica: Usain Bolt
Ethiopia: Haile Gebrselassie
Ukraine: Wladimir Klitschko
Czechia: Emil Zátopek
Looks like Paavo Nurmi is considered greatest in Finland.

Michael Jordan was ranked number one greatest athlete in 20th century by ESPN, so I would emphasize him in US.

 

In fact, I had forgotten that Phelps is the greatest athlete of all. Much more from the USA alone

 

I only know Spanish sport in depth so it will be the only country I am sure of on my list:

Spain: 1- Rafa Nadal, who has a great advantage over the second place, 2- Miguel Induráin, who also has a significant advantage over the others.

I am not sure about the rest of the countries because I do not know all the athletes of the different sporting modalities that exist, so the only thing I can contribute are certain ideas or personal appreciations:

Italy: For me there is not a single footballer who is better than the legendary cyclist Fausto Coppi, none. Rossi, Tomba, Agostini? Better than Coppi? Maybe. More mythical or legendary? No.

France: I am completely unaware of the world of Rugby, which I know is very important for the French and where I imagine there have been legendary players, I know that Teddy Riner is a true legend but from a minority sport, Nikola Karabatic is also another phenomenon. Platini and Zidane are two geniuses, but for me they would both be behind Bernard Hinault, one of the 2-3 best cyclists in history and 5-time winner of the Tour de France, the race that for the French themselves is almost a religion.

United States: I have a bit of a problem with France, in this case I know very little about American Football and Baseball and I imagine that both sports will provide some candidates for best American athlete in history. Of the athletes I know, Serena, Tiger, Nicklaus, Owens, Jordan, Ali or Phelps could be candidates. I'd probably stick with Phelps.

Argentina: I'll stick with Messi, although Fangio could also be a candidate.

Brazil: for me it would be Pele, he seems more important to me, for example, than Senna.

Germany: Schumacher and Graf for me ahead of Beckenbauer, who is the best German footballer in history. If I had to choose I would choose Graf.

Hungary: I don't know, for me the greatest is Puskas but I know little about Hungarian sport and in Hungary, for example, there is a great Olympic tradition with athletes who have won even 10 medals and up to 7 golds so there may be other better athletes in that country than Puskas.

Sweden: I don't know anything about winter sports, and I'm sure the Swedes here have had great athletes. Of the Swedish athletes that I know, I prefer Björn Borg.

Finland: the same thing happens to me as with Sweden. Of those I know I choose Paavo Nurmi.

Australia: Rod Laver could be number 1, but in a country where rugby is the national sport, it makes me have doubts. Also, I know very little about Australian sport.

Czech Republic: only two names come to mind: Zatopek and Zelezny. Is the national sport Ice Hockey? And they have won the world championship 12 times, perhaps the best Czech in history is a hockey player and not those mentioned above.

Romania: I guess Comaneci.

Cuba: from the little I know about Cuban sports, I could name Pedroso, Sotomayor and Juantorena as possible candidates.

Ethiopia: Bikila, Bekele or Gebrselassie could be candidates.

USSR: I have no idea about this, although I have always heard very good things about Valeri Kharlamov. Maybe some forum member who knows the world of ice hockey can provide something more about whether this athlete was really as good as he says. The legendary fighter Alexandr Karelin also comes to mind.

Finally, although I do not know the sports history of those countries in depth, I imagine that Bubka (Ukraine), Federer (Switzerland), Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal), Djokovic (Serbia), Bolt (Jamaica) and Merckx (Belgium) will have no rival within its borders.

For me, a “team” athlete, as is the case in soccer, generally has a harder time being “chosen as the best” since I believe that those who practice individual sports tend to stand out more since their achievements are easier to measure.

 

In USSR the most popular sport is chess and their goat at chess is Kasparov

 

Ovechkin, I'd think. Russia was always way more prominent in hockey than they were in football and Ovechkin is their greatest of all-time. I don't know enough about hockey to properly assess him on the hockey GOAT scale though.

Kasparov is a good one if we talk about non-athletic sports, he's probably top-3 in chess alongside Fischer & Magnus (most likely behind the latter).

Not sure about MMA & stuff as I'm not a fan but Khabib may be another candidacy.

 

Two players immediately come to mind: Serge Blanco and Antoine Dupont. Both failed to win the WC though (Dupont still has time however).

 

For me, for France, the trio that leaves me dreamy is Platini, Hinault, Prost. the 80's.

But Zidane destroyed everything since 98 with also the explosion of the medias and a football that takes all the place.
Before Platini, Kopa was something but I think that the racing cyclists, during decades, were the true heroes of the whole country - and of the whole family, when some sports can polarize more on a specific public.
So that could be Anquetil for the palmares in the grand tours and the image of a lord that can impress (in truth he used to live in a castle) or on the contrary can be quite repulsive, or more probably the most popular of them all, Poulidor. It is true that he had a word and a smile for everybody that he encountered (it was his trademark but it was also natural I think or he could not do it everytime). And many other racers, and often especially in their region with almost everytime origins from the farming world or the working class (workers, craftmen, what they actually did before becoming professionals and sometimes after their career too, still, for some of them).

People, the society, are not sensible to the same sports across all the generations. Now, football (which is a world in the world and is present everywhere including in the virtual world with internet, the betting, the video games etc.) is devouring everything and there are big games every weeks. It's not every 4 years as for the olympic sports. Also nowadays, people are often "supporters/ fans" of foreign clubs, that is the PL for football or the NBA for basket-ball... including clubs that don't have French players or not that special like Man City or Liverpool.

There's been some fervor around the last Rugby WC held in France lately, amongst the youngs. Not sure why exactly : the beers, the post-covid stuff so it was an occasion to socialize? For some "values" or "morals" but which ones exactly? Screaming in the streets at night after the game was played... strange... white people only btw, almost...
I'm not sure it had to do with the game in itself tbh. And the world of rugby that had so many great values and blablabla has become so professional now... it has changed... starting with the rules, that change every 6 months. It's not exactly the same sport anymore. It's footballized and americanized too, globalized.
One of the original values was that it was all about the collective and no about extracting one player from the team but there's always been some star players anyway and yes, Blanco was much it but I think that Sella was superb too, more in the "vision" thing.

Marie-Jo was magnificient too but there was so many scandals in his sport since some years (in '96, Ottey was surnatural so what to say about Perec... ok Perec was younger... well...).
Killy, that was the 60's. If you're not a "historian in sports" there's little chance you know him, by now.

I think you @Excape Goat can go for Zidane easy. It's mad how everbody pass on his dark cases. They all have, but him, the worst, it is that it is all hushed up affairs. 6-time favorite personality of the people and still 15th last year.

In the motorsport there are also Sébastien Loeb, Peterhansel... but anyway.
For my part, I don't mind about the judokas (I did not say about judo); they feature well in the fave personality poll too.
There's been a period about swimmers too.

Cerdan remains a legend of the sports and even a romantic figure.

Also, we must not forget about Alain Mimoun, an endearing person.

 

I don't know about winter sports either, but I'm quite sure about Paavo Nurmi for Finland as well.

 

Bubka was my first thought too, but making some quick searches made me change to W. Klitschko.

Objectively I agree with Messi in Argentina, but I think Maradona is more loved in Argentina and would be chosen by most people. Personally I consider Messi the greatest ever in football, and also greatest athlete ever. Football is biggest sport in world after all.

Phelps is not in line with general consenus, he usually end a little bit down the greatest lists. Swimming is not that highly regarded sport. I read one US poll from last year that had Jordan first (19% chose him), Brady second (12%) and Ali in third (8%).

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1230836/best-athletes-ever/

 

I'm fairly sure that Kasparov and Carlsen is regarded as the two greatest in the chess community, and Carlsen surpassing Kasparov after defeating Nepomniachtchi in 2021, becoming classic chess champion for the fifth time. Fischer is probably third because he was world champion quite spectacularly, but he never defended his title.