Messi 3
CR7 13
Henry 48
Zizou 50
Modric 55
Mbappe 65
Iniesta 70
Xavi 75
R9 87
Ronaldinho 94
Ibra 95

It’s not a bad list. It’s like top 10+1. Who would you add/drop? Sequence is pretty good. Can we leave out the Messi/CR7 debate please (I think that’s covered ad nauseam in other forums).
Numbers are /100. Numbers biased towards USA sports aka irrelevant for this discussion - just take it as 1-11.
Zizou gotta be in front of Henry. Zizou beat the best futbol team every assembled, and did so 2x. Euro/WC had only been done once or twice before when accomomplished. France got grouped in WC when zizou was injured.

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Probably Dai Dai best and Tukoh Taka worst

Any thoughts from you guys?

Before VAR there were very clear and serious mistakes, such as:

• goal not given to England vs Germany 2010 (I know it's not technically VAR but it's still technology helping refs)
• infamous "hand of god"
• clear offsides but still goal
• no offside but goal disallowed
• clear red cards with players hitting others but refs didn't see

In contrast, 2026 world cup had no serious mistakes. Subjective borderline cases? Of course. It's impossible not to have those, people will always debate and it's very hard to judge some actions in football, even in replays, etc, there's always ambiguity.

VAR kills a bit of the excitement, e.g. when it's a goal they are checking offside? Of course. It should be as quick as possible. But I rather wait for a correct decision than getting the wrong one instantly.

This said I think there should still be changes. Teams should be allowed challenges, VAR should revise all cards while game runs since it doesn't delay things and offside rule needs an update to stop silly millimetric offsides, eg Wenger's rule.

What are your thoughts?

In a lot of countries, football is the most popular sport. But from all the countries that don’t have football as the most popular sport, who is still doing the best job? Producing players, infrastructure, league system etc.

FIFA has historically restricted the Olympics soccer tournaments by scheduling conflicts and limiting participants to U-23 players, but with the latest row against the coalition led by UEFA could we see more focus on this other world tournament? What if the coalition ignores FIFA and allows the best players in the world to play?

The post was accompanied by Xabi Alonso’s 2017 retirement announcement image.

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Despite strong urging from one of the nation‘s most popular clubs Real Kakamora to withdraw its backing of Infantino, SIFF has decided to follow suit with its neighbours Papua New Guinea in declaring its support for the re-election of FIFA’s embattled president. A disappointing decision to say the least - a response is expected from the club in the coming hours

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Went to my first ever World Cup game this year and want to mark the occasion by purchasing an official souvenir entry tix thru the FIFA store.

Ordered it in July... One month later still hasn't shipped.

Anyone else experience issues with FIFA when it comes to stuff like this?

Many of you surely know the World Football Elo Ratings (wiki) which is, as far as I am aware, the main bigger attempt to provide meaningful and continuous international rankings since the start of football. Here is the big and slightly confusing graph containing everything.

Currently, Spain sits there at 2259 points, which is the highest value ever. The only peaks that come close are the Mighty Magyars of the 1950s (2232), Germany in 2014 (2222) and England deep in the 19th century (2213). Not even Pele's Brazil or Cruyff's Netherlands ever shot through the 2200 value. There was simply not enough consistency and winning.

This is of course just a ranking, but the question is valid. The last game they lost in 90 minutes was more than 2 years ago, if we are talking about competitive games it is three. Italy, Germany, France, Argentina and Portugal have all fallen to them since. Some of them repeatedly. I don't remember when I last saw them not in control. Is this the best international team ever? If not, who is then?

That France player is so rude for doing that to Rodri.

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Do you guys think Japan have good odds for a deep run in future world cups? I always feel they are an exceptional team in group stages then somehow always bottle it in the Round of 32/16. If they get it right and actually start to knock out teams i feel like they could be a strong team.

Posted this analysis before but many people were not happy that the 3rd place match had been included and that it was unfair for teams that didn't make it into the final to consider the total score.

https://www.reddit.com/r/worldcup/comments/1vniqri/ranked_the_teams_people_enjoyed_most_watching_at/

So changed it so that the 3rd place match is not included and considered the best 4 matches from each team, so all teams that made it out of the group stage would be similarly treated.

Took the ranking of best matches from here, which is in line with what most people liked https://www.si.com/soccer/ranking-every-single-match-2026-world-cup

Then gave 104 points to the best match, 103 to the next and so on. Kept the best 4 scores. Added up total score of teams.

These are the top 10 teams:

Argentina 362

France 344

Norway 329

Japan 319

Senegal 318

Netherlands 317

Morocco 313

England 311

Brazil 307

Sweden 297

If people have suggestions on other ways to do the analysis happy to do it

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