Lionel Messi has been named the best free-kick taker in the world by FIFA 20.

The Barcelona superstar astonishingly scored eight free-kicks throughout the 2018-19 season, thus doing more than enough to maintain his number one spot in the eyes of EA Sport.

Alaves, PSV Eindhoven, Real Betis, Villarreal and Liverpool all succumbed to his set-piece brilliance, while Espanyol conceded three Messi free-kicks across the campaign.

In other words, Messi has certainly deserved his rating for 94 free-kick accuracy, which even places him above Roberto Carlos' ICON card in second place.

However, before we get too ahead of ourselves with the full list, we want to address the elephant in the room and that's the player to whom Messi is always compared: Cristiano Ronaldo.

FIFA 20 stats released

Although Ronaldo has scored some recent free-kicks for his country, the last time he converted a set piece in club football came against Gremio back in December 2017.

That's quite the drought and for that very reason, the Portuguese has only been handed an accuracy rating of 79, meaning that he finds himself as the joint 331st best taker on FIFA 20.

So, if Ronaldo is automatically given a free-kick when you're playing as Juventus - sorry, Piemonte Calcio - then it might be wise to shuffle him aside for Miralem Pjanic.

Best free-kick takers in the game

And as much as we'd love to list the whole 330 players who are more accurate than Ronaldo, we have called upon FUTHead's data to name the top 25 in EA Sports' new release.

In the case of any equal ratings, we have fallen back on FUTHead's method of ordering and the full list can be seen down below:

25. Juan Mata (Manchester United - 86 free-kick accuracy

24. James Rodriguez (Real Madrid) - 86 free-kick accuracy

23. Yasuhito Endo (Gamba Osaka) - 86 free-kick accuracy

22. Neymar (Paris Saint-Germain) - 87 free-kick accuracy

21. Gareth Bale (Real Madrid) - 87 free-kick accuracy

20. Bruno Fernandes (Sporting Lisbon) - 87 free-kick accuracy

19. Lasse Schone (Genoa) - 87 free-kick accuracy

18. Kengo Nakamura (Kawasaki Frontale) - 87 free-kick accuracy

17. Anderson Talisca (Guangzhou Evergrande) - 87 free-kick accuracy

16. Ruslan Malinovskiy (Atalanta) - 87 free-kick accuracy

15. Paulo Dybala (Juventus) - 88 free-kick accuracy

14. Memphis Depay (Lyon) - 88 free-kick accuracy

13. Aleksandr Kolarov (AS Roma) - 88 free-kick accuracy

12. Angel Di Maria (Paris Saint-Germain) - 88 free-kick accuracy

11. Marvin Plattenhardt (Hertha Berlin) - 89 free-kick accuracy

10. James Ward-Prowse (Southampton) - 89 free-kick accuracy

9. Daniel Parejo (Valencia) - 90 free-kick accuracy

8. Hakan Calhanoglu (AC Milan) - 90 free-kick accuracy

7. Robert Skov (Hoffenheim) - 90 free-kick accuracy

6. Enis Bardhi (Levante) - 91 free-kick accuracy

5. Miralem Pjanic (Juventus) - 92 free-kick accuracy

4. Gianfranco Zola (ICON) - 92 free-kick accuracy

3. Sebastian Giovinco (Al Hilal) - 92 free-kick accuracy

2. Roberto Carlos (ICON) - 93 free-kick accuracy

1. Lionel Messi (Barcelona) - 94 free-kick accuracy