Johan Cruyff
Franz Beckenbauer
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Johan Cruyff leads 1 of 2 categories. Our all-time ranking places Johan Cruyff at #5 and Franz Beckenbauer at #6.
The case for Johan Cruyff
The most influential footballer who ever lived, and a top-five player before you count the influence. Cruyff won three Ballons d'Or (1971, 1973, 1974) and led Ajax to three consecutive European Cups from 1971 to 1973 as the on-pitch conductor of Total Football, then carried the idea to Barcelona — ending their 14-year league drought in 1974 — and to the 1974 World Cup, where his Golden Ball performance and the Cruyff turn against Sweden outlived the final defeat to West Germany. He scored over 290 league goals and 33 in 48 for the Netherlands, but goals understate a player whose genius was spatial: he directed the positions of all ten teammates while playing. His second act settled the argument about influence — as Barcelona coach he won four straight titles and the club's first European Cup (1992), built the Dream Team, championed La Masia, and created the lineage that runs through Guardiola to the modern positional game. Most great players master the game; Cruyff redesigned it.
The case for Franz Beckenbauer
The greatest defender ever, ranked here because he invented the position he mastered. Beckenbauer took the sweeper role — until then a purely destructive job — and turned it into the attacking libero, striding out of defence to become an extra midfielder, a concept that echoes in every modern ball-playing center-back and every full-back inverting into midfield. The honors are staggering: European champion with West Germany in 1972 (a side often rated the best European international team of its era), World Cup-winning captain in 1974, three consecutive European Cups with Bayern Munich from 1974 to 1976, and the only defender with two Ballons d'Or (1972, 1976). He then managed West Germany to the 1990 World Cup, joining Mário Zagallo (and later Didier Deschamps) in the tiny club of men who won it as player and coach. Over 103 caps he combined elegance with ruthless game-management; his duel with Cruyff in the 1974 final — pragmatism against poetry, 2-1 — remains the sport's great philosophical argument in ninety minutes.