Who is the greatest footballer of all time? Mathematical study named GOAT

Highlights

Dr. Tom Crawford conducted a mathematical study to determine the greatest footballer of all time, with Cristiano Ronaldo coming out on top.
The study considered various factors such as club titles, international titles, goals, Ballon d'Or titles, records, and Z-Factor seasons.
While Ronaldo ranked first, other players on the list, like Johan Cruyff and Diego Maradona, also made significant contributions to the sport and continue to be highly regarded.

The debate over who is the greatest footballer of all time has raged on for some time and will go on for some time yet. Pele, Diego Maradona, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are just four players considered the sport's greatest player.

Dr Tom Crawford, who works as a mathematician at the University of Oxford, attempted to settle the GOAT debate on behalf of LiveScore in September 2021. Dr Crawford's first task was to come up with a shortlist of 10 players. To qualify, players must have won two or more Ballon d'Or trophies. They then had to score high enough over seven categories to cement their place in the top 10.

After the numbers were crunched, the final 10 were Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Pele, Diego Maradona, Marco van Basten, Johan Cruyff, Ferenc Puskas, Alfredo Di Stefano, Ronaldo and Michel Platini. The final 10 then scored points across seven rounds. They were as follows:

Round 1: Club titles
Round 2: International titles
Round 3: Club goals
Round 4: International goals
Round 5: Ballon d’Or titles
Round 6: Records
Round 7: Z-Factor seasons

So with that in mind, we take a look at the results of Dr Crawford's mathematical study and find out who was named the greatest player of all time.

All statistics are courtesy of Transfermarkt.

10 Johan Cruyff

He may only finish tenth in this study, but Cruyff revolutionised the way football is seen by many, with his effect on the game still being evident in the modern game after his sad passing in 2016. The man considered to be the best manager in world football currently - Pep Guardiola - went on record to praise the Dutchman f or influencing a generation of coaches, as he told ESPN: "I think Johan was the most influential person in football in all history. He changed not one club, he changed two clubs. As a player and as a coach, it is impossible to find a guy like this."

The clubs in question were Ajax and Barcelona where he spent meaningful time as both a player and a manager. Still, as this study focuses on the playing career only it is only fair to point out the accomplishments of the man on the pitch as Cruyff won a staggering 12 league titles with the previously named clubs while picking up three Ballon d'Ors in the process. Cruyff is considered to be one of the greatest Dutch players of all time, with many having him right at the top of that list.

9 Diego Maradona

It comes as a shock that the study has Maradona in ninth place as many fans would put him significantly higher in their list of greatest players ever, with professional players leaning in that direction also. He and a man who will be discussed later on this list often find themselves in the middle of the greatest-ever player debates that occur regularly.

Maradona, unfortunately, passed away in 2020, but his legacy within the sport will never be forgotten as the mesmerising Argentine made opposing teams look foolish regularly at the peak of his career. His unique ability to weave a path through midfields and defences set him apart as the best player of his generation and is eerily similar to a modern-day great that we will also get to later.

Napoli have gone a long way to showing why Maradona is still one of the most popular athletes of all time, never mind just in the world of football, by naming their stadium after their former midfielder to pay tribute to the iconic figure after he led them to two Serie A titles and a UEFA Cup in the 1980s and 90s. Argentina went on a lengthy drought without lifting World Cup silverware after he starred in the 1986 tournament, with the country only reclaiming that title in late 2022.

8 Michel Platini

While some names make the top 10 to have won the Ballon d'Or three times, it must be pointed out that Platini is the only midfielder to have achieved this feat during his career. The Frenchman starred on the international scene in 1984 as he captained his country to European Championship success on home turf while bagging nine goals from midfield in the tournament, including an incredible hat-trick against Belgium.

For a midfield player, Platini definitely had an eye for goal and was brilliant at being in the right place at the right time to strike with a consistent goal tally following him from Nancy to Saint-Étienne and then finally to Juventus. Platini is still seen as one of the greatest French players in history and actually comes out on top in that regard according to this list ahead of the likes of Zinedine Zidane and Thierry Henry.

7 Alfredo Di Stefano

A two-time Ballon d'Or, Di Stefano was a talismanic figure for Real Madrid for more than a decade in the 1950s and 60s while banging in goals for fun. Los Blancos claimed eight La Liga titles with the Argentine-born forward as the main man in attack. Despite his birth country, he went on to represent Spain for the majority of his international career after playing a handful of games for Argentina.

Taking both club and international goals into account, the striker scored more than 400 competitive goals from less than 600 games. If a player was scoring at that rate in the modern game, fans would be lauding him to the end of the earth. The study may have Di Stefano quite low on the list here, but that may be a consequence of the era he played in and if he played more recently, it could have been a different story for the legendary figure.

6 Marco Van Basten

Van Basten was a goalscoring machine during his career as he only played for two clubs in the form of Ajax and AC Milan. There are a few players with the same number of Ballon d'Ors as the Dutch forward, but only two players with more success when it comes to the individual award. He claimed the honour on three occasions with two coming in successive years in 1988 and 1989.

The former Ajax talisman ended his career with almost a goal contribution each game with 277 goals and 82 assists in 373 games across his club career. Throw his 24 international goals into the mix, and he comes agonisingly close to the 300-goal mark. It is rather incredible to consider all the accolades Van Basten accumulated throughout his career as an ankle injury forced him into very early retirement at the age of 31.

While Van Basten was also a top performer for his national team, his biggest success with the Dutch side was to win the European Championship in 1988 but always fell short in World Cup competition. That does not take away from his legacy within the game, however, as many Dutch fans now cry out for a striker like Van Basten to inject life into the current national side.

5 Ronaldo Nazario

The original Ronaldo is the Brazilian icon that is well-known as 'R9' to fans in the modern game to avoid any confusion. His nation rested their hopes on his shoulders in both the 1998 and 2002 World Cup finals with the former being famous for his illness that hampered Brazil in a 3-0 loss to France. He did however, make things right in 2002 as he starred in the final with two goals in a 2-0 success over Germany, with the game being considered one of the greatest finals in World Cup history.

Not only was he incredible on the international stage but Ronaldo was a global superstar during his time playing for the two biggest teams in both Italy and Spain. Both Milan clubs and Spanish giants - Real Madrid and Barcelona - were the home of the striker considered by many to have been the most talented ever.

Injury issues did cast a cloud over large parts of his career, and had this not been the case, Ronaldo would likely be held in even higher regard today with his mix of pace and technical ability working incredibly with his powerful frame to make a freak of a football player. Defenders would fear the man before the game had even started, and it would become apparent why shortly after the game began.

4 Ferenc Puskas

Puskas is known to many modern-day fans due to the fact a Goal of the Year award is named after the late Hungarian striker. The 'Puskas Award' is handed to the player who scored the best goal of the previous year and this was named after the clinical goalscorer upon its inception in 2009.

When the word clinical is used to describe the forward, it almost feels underwhelming as he was more than lethal in front of goal as he netted 358 goals in 350 competitive games for Budapest Honved which is unfathomable even if it did take place in Hungarian football in the 1940s and 50s. After dominating in his home country, Puskas went on to win five league titles in Spain with Real Madrid while scoring an incredible amount of goals once more.

3 Pele

The football world mourned at the end of 2022 as Brazilian icon, Pele, passed away at the age of 82. His legacy in the game is immortalised forever after the forward scored so many goals that it became hard for people to keep track of exactly how many he ended his career with. Until the past two decades, he was generally considered to be in a two-horse race with Maradona as the best player to have ever blessed the world with their ability on a football pitch. He is also regarded by many as the best Brazilian player ever, as his ranking here shows.

Dr Crawford looks to have settled that debate as the Brazilian managed to finish a fair amount of positions above his Argentine counterpart. It is always a nice thought that the pair are now reunited and keeping watch over the current generation of football players while getting stuck into a kickabout among themselves.

Three World Cup wins with the team to have won the competition more than any other is enough to keep Pele high up on this list despite the fact Pele never moved to and conquered European football in the way others on the list did. He did dominate in Brazil, however, with his mix of technical ability and speed of play almost being revolutionary and ahead of the time. Pele never won a Ballon d'Or as the award didn't exist during his playing days, but he was handed seven retrospective awards by France Football.

2 Lionel Messi

Many fans would have Messi down as the greatest player to have graced a football pitch, even more so now that the little magician has added a World Cup title to his ever-growing list of honours. At this point, it would take far too long to go through that entire list with the Argentine surely running out of space to keep his various medals and awards. The World Cup success alone is enough to separate his legacy from some of the players on this list such as Cruyff, Puskas and Van Basten.

The 36-year-old has been a prolific force during his storied career at the top level despite never being played as an out-and-out centre-forward. Spells as a false-nine have allowed him to drop into pockets of space and create beautiful goals as well as put the finishing touch on many a flowing move in his time. Barcelona saw the very best of Messi, with the highlight perhaps being the 91 goals he bagged in 2012, the most ever scored in a calendar year. That is one record that's very unlikely to be broken any time soon. Another record he is likely to retain for some time is the most 10/10 ratings as he is comfortably ahead of his closest competition.

10 La Liga titles and four Champions League successes go along with his record number of Ballon d'Ors - which is currently sitting at seven but could still increase - to put him down in the history books for eternity. The biggest compliment that Messi could take from these lists is that he has now almost unanimously overtaken the legacy of his hero, Maradona. This study had Messi as the second-best player ever seen, leaving only one man to be top of the list on this occasion.

1 Cristiano Ronaldo

As could already be figured out by his absence from the list until this point, Ronaldo was named the best player of all time by the study carried out by Dr Crawford. When looking at the factors taken into account, it is not much of a surprise to see the Portuguese striker top the list as he is the top goalscorer ever at international level with 125 goals for the senior Portugal team in just over 200 games.

Not only has the 38-year-old been prolific on the international stage, but Ronaldo is also recognised as the top goalscorer of all time with an additional 726 goals to his name at club level with the superstar still going strong with Al Nassr in Saudi Arabia. There are no signs that the Real Madrid and Manchester United icon will be drawing his career to a close any time soon meaning there are plenty of opportunities to win more trophies and score more goals.

His haul of five Ballon d'Ors would look like an incredible legacy to leave behind had it not been for Messi's superhuman form for seven years. Both men are the only players to have won the most prestigious individual award more than three times as they have both had a real choke hold on the honour over the past 15 years.

Among all the league titles won in England, Spain and Italy, Ronaldo is on an elite list of players to have won five Champions Leagues with one being at Manchester United and the other four with Real Madrid. During his time playing at the Bernabeu, he was an unstoppable force and his team came into their own during European competition in particular.

Team	Number of Goals
Real Madrid	450
Manchester United	145
Portugal	125
Juventus	101
Al Nassr	25
Sporting Lisbon	5

Dr Crawford concluded: "As a massive football fan, I have long debated with my friends who the greatest player of all time is. I have loved bringing maths to the masses over the past few years, so being able to showcase how you can use it within the world of football has been a lot of fun. “Whilst Cristiano Ronaldo has come out on top from my algorithm, it is clear that all the other players’ stats are incredible, and I am sure the debate will continue!” Dr Crawford isn't wrong. While this study favoured Ronaldo, it goes without saying that many will dispute its findings.