Chronicle Editor
WHO is the best player in world football? For the best part of two decades, the answer has been a coin toss.
Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo were the two greatest footballers of a generation, the former earning the Greatest of All Time tag in many quarters after capping off an outrageous career with the World Cup, the ultimate prize.
However, since Messi and Ronaldo departed the grand stage of European football for farewell tours of the US and Saudi Arabia respectively, the position of ‘the best’ is yet to be unanimously filled.
Several rising megastars could justify throwing their names, their talents, their achievements into the conversation. Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappé were seen by many as undisputed pretenders to the throne prior to the emergence of Jude Bellingham and the continued growth of several established names.
5. Vinicius Jr (Real Madrid)
It’s an ominous sign for the rest of the football world that while Real Madrid has shed some of its ageing skin in recent transfer windows, an equally venomous threat has slithered into the open: Vini Jr.
The 24-year-old has already racked up more than 200 appearances for the club in all competitions since 2018, and he is one of the few contenders who could, without a hint of delusion, claim to be sitting top of this list in several years time.
Vincius’s pace is scorching, with dynamite acceleration able to propel him from standing starts to beyond petrified defenders at will. Most impressively, he harnesses that speed with quickness of feet and ball control to match any player in the world.
4. Erling Haaland (Man City)
Haaland has normalised the abnormal. Arguably, the Norse titan’s only flaw in 2022/23 was setting the bar insurmountably high from the very start. Between the start of the season and the end of 2022, Haaland found the net 22 times in just 15 Premier League games. For context, that total would have won the Golden Boot in seven Premier League seasons.
The 24-year-old has continued to score approximately a goal per game in the best league in world football, and is firmly on course to hoist the Golden Boot once more in 2024/25 — just a few months into the campaign.
The next few years should be explosive and, if he proves his consistency over several years, he will sit No.1 in this list without rival.
3. Harry Kane (Bayern Munich)
We’re still not moving Kane away from third place despite Haaland’s obvious challenge.
The relative mystique of foreign leagues can often inflate a player’s reputation as we are fed their many highlights and rarely see their 4/10s, the days they’d rather not remember, their misses, their failures. The Premier League, in all its hyper-exposed, tribal glory, is often not a place where rival fans can appreciate world class talent when they see it. When Kane moved to Germany and made such a mockery of the Bundesliga, everyone finally saw the plain truth.
Kane’s season-end tallies remain consistent around the 30-goal mark with a bundle of assists and uncountable contributions setting him above almost every other striker in the world. In 2023/24, he netted 36 goals in the 34-game season. For context, Robert Lewandowski set the single-season record in 2021 with 41.
The England captain’s finishing is exemplary, his positioning to accommodate for a lack of raw pace is second-to-none, though his unique selling point is his uncanny creative ability, to pick a pass from deep, to swing a cross in, to play the No.10 and No.9 roles simultaneously and effectively and he achieved all of that in a Tottenham team that, with the greatest respect, was simply not at his level and rarely has been near his standard. He is the greatest natural No.9 in world football right now.
2. Mohamed Salah (Liverpool)
The Egyptian King is enjoying a transition phase, from an elite Premier League player into an all-time legendary one.
Mohamed Salah’s consistency remains remarkable with 31, 31, 30, 25 goals in his last four seasons respectively across all competitions. He is rarely injured, rarely suspended and usually always available, proven by 51 appearances in each of the three campaigns prior to 2023/24 where he missed a month due to the Africa Cup of Nations, hence his marginally lower goal tally.
For a player with a relatively simple playing style, he remains an enigma to halt. If he racks up another couple of 20+ goal seasons, he will hit the 200 Premier League goals mark, an unbelievable achievement for any player, let alone a winger who actually does play out wide.
Salah achieved more than 40 goal contributions in the top flight alone by the end of February and is likely to soar beyond Alan Shearer’s record of 47 by May. He is a generational talent showing no signs of slowing down.
1. Kylian Mbappé (Real Madrid)
Mbappé is a megastar forged by the crucible of the World Cup. It’s an old-school way to achieve greatness given the prominence of the Champions League and Premier League, but Mbappé’s international heroics prove his ability and mentality beyond all reasonable doubt.
Like Neymar, like Messi, like many before, made a mockery of Ligue 1 but his form on the global stage for both club and country puts him out in front. His World Cup 2022 final hat-trick will go down as the stuff of legends – a big time performance from a big time player.
Mbappé was often portrayed as a dramatic soap character in the long-brewed psychodrama between PSG and Real Madrid ahead of his transfer, a large portion of his mind fixed on off-field politics, but the character he showed throughout the World Cup, his mentality and steely determination to drag his team kicking and screaming to the trophy has elevated him to the very top of the ladder.
The 26-year-old is one of the fastest footballers we’ve ever seen grace the field, with shooting technique like no other. He has started to move through the gears for Real Madrid and by the end of the campaign, he will have netted a ferocious haul of goals and, in all likelihood, trophies. – radiotimes.com
Online Reporter