All good things must come to an end, they say, and that is certainly the case when it comes to football careers. Neither Lionel Messi nor Cristiano Ronaldo have hung up their boots yet, and they look set to carry on for a few years still, but their time at the very top appears to be over.
That much is reflected in our survey of the 100 best male footballers in the world in 2023, which, for the first time since we started the list in 2012, has neither the Argentinian or Portuguese superstar in the top three. The fact that they have featured so highly for 10 years is a remarkable feat and we are unlikely to see their like again.
In fact, a further four players have been among the best 100 players on the planet for all 12 years we have done the list: Robert Lewandowski, Luka Modric, Karim Benzema and Toni Kroos. Up until this year, Neymar had been an ever-present too.
Now it’s all change, though, with Erling Haaland becoming our fifth winner of the award, after Messi, Ronaldo, Modric and Lewandowski. He was a clear winner in 2023 with 147 of our 218 judges picking him as their No 1. He finished more than 900 points ahead of second-placed Jude Bellingham.
Despite being only 23, Haaland has been in our top 10 four years in a row and reaches the summit after being part of a Manchester City team that won the treble. He was, as many believed when Pep Guardiola signed him from Borussia Dortmund in 2022, the final piece of the City jigsaw.
In 2022-23 he scored 52 goals in 53 appearances in all competitions and he has continued along roughly the same goals-per-game ratio this campaign, hitting 19 in 22 games at the time of writing.
It is difficult to see him dropping out of the top 10 in the foreseeable future – although can he win it next year with Norway missing out on Euro 2024? – and perhaps he will one day have made it to 12 consecutive lists. This year he was joined by another 11 City players in recognition of their exploits at home and in Europe.
It is rare that we see a defensive midfielder in our top 10 but such was Rodri’s impact in 2023 that 18 of our judges deemed him to be the best of them all. He is so important to Guardiola’s side, in fact, that the team’s past four Premier League losses have come when he has not played: against Brentford towards the end of the 2022-23 season and against Wolves, Arsenal and Aston Villa this campaign.
Real Madrid remain second on the list of clubs with most players in the top 100, despite missing out on both the Champions League and La Liga trophies. Carlo Ancelotti is overseeing an impressive transition of the squad with Modric and Kroos still in our top 100 at the same time as Vinícius Júnior, Rodrygo, Aurélien Tchouaméni and Eduardo Camavinga are making their mark.
Internazionale move up to joint fourth on the club list after reaching the Champions League final and pushing Manchester City to the very end in Istanbul, with three players who have since left them also making the list: André Onana (Manchester United), Marcelo Brozovic (Al-Nassr) and Romelu Lukaku (Roma).
England, meanwhile, move up to first when it comes to the number of players from each country on this year’s list with 13, one ahead of France and four ahead of last year’s World Cup winners, Argentina. They are the only country with two players (Bellingham and Harry Kane) in the top 10. Things are looking good for Gareth Southgate in the run-up to the Euros.
It is a different story for the hosts, though, Germany going through a torrid time with less than six months left to the tournament. Julian Nagelsmann replaced Hansi Flick but after a slight upturn in results they lost both their friendlies in November, against Austria away and Turkey at home.
They still have eight players on our list, suggesting that if Nagelsmann can find the right approach before the tournament they will be one of the favourites. Ilkay Gündogan is the highest ranked German at 16th but it is a player four places below, Jamal Musiala, who really sets the pulse racing.
Perhaps the biggest shift on this year’s list has been the emergence of the Saudi Pro League as a major player in international football. Their investment in the sport has led to the league going from one player on the list in 2022, Ronaldo, to five this year with Karim Benzema, Yassine “Bono” Bounou, Riyad Mahrez and Brozovic joining the Portuguese forward.
It is difficult to predict what will happen in 2024 but one thing is clear: there is no shortage of young, exciting players coming through. Twenty-five of the players on the list are aged 23 or younger, with Paris Saint-Germain’s 17-year-old midfielder Warren Zaïre-Emery the youngest on the list. The old guard will have to fight even harder next year to stay in their positions, but they would not want it any other way.
