As silly as it might seem, whoever wins the 2026 World Cup is going to have an outsize impact on who the soccer world decides is the best soccer player in the world.
World Cup 2026
Sure, there are 11 players on each team. And OK, fine, the best players have possession of the ball for only about three total minutes every match. And yeah, it’s entirely possible that the best soccer player in the world right now had the “misfortune” of being born in, say, Georgia — no, not the one with the peaches.
But that doesn’t stop Ballon d’Or voters from leaning aggressively toward selecting a player from whatever team won the World Cup whenever the vote falls in a World Cup year.
To put it more specifically: If Portugal win the World Cup, there’s a very real chance that Cristiano Ronaldo wins the Ballon d’Or — despite the fact that he’s 41 years old and hasn’t had a real impact on the highest levels of club soccer in at least five years.
Match Details
So, ahead of the tournament, let’s take stock of who the best soccer players at the World Cup — and by proxy, in the world — might actually be and rank them.
How this World Cup player ranking will work
International soccer is a different game from what you see at the club level — less training time, much less pressing, fewer possession patterns — but the club level is still by far the highest level, and it’s where these guys spend 90% of their professional lives. So, this list is mainly based on the past couple of seasons of club performance.
Tournament Impact
No one can predict how well any of these players will do at the World Cup with their national teams — try as we all might — but what we can say for certain is how good these players are generally as they head into the World Cup, which begins on Thursday.
To make this ranking more useful, the 50 selections are separated into seven tiers. After all, what is meaningfully different between the players being ranked, say, No. 41 and No. 40? By grouping players into tiers, it frames this exercise a bit more clearly.
The main criterion for this ranking: How much of an impact does a given player have on his team’s chances of winning a given game?
Stay informed with the latest news on Wararka.so — your trusted source for Somalia and world news.
