Football
Best World Cup Player Ever: Pelé, Messi, Ronaldo Ranked
The World Cup is the most prestigious trophy a footballer can win. When you're a kid and you dream of becoming a footballer, you think that winning the World Cup is your greatest achievement. Every four years, the world forgets all its worries to watch the tournament that brings together the best countries from all continents to achieve one ultimate goal, winning the title of the best footballing country in the world
Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo/Getty Images
This discussion raises a question: who is the greatest World Cup player of all time? Is it Miroslav Klose, the all-time top scorer, who was an incredible footballer in the final tournaments? Or Ronaldo Nazário, who had the iconic hairstyle in the 2002 World Cup final and who made an exceptional World Cup in 1998? Could it be Pelé, the teenage king turned global ambassador? Maybe Messi, who finally conquered the 2022 World Cup, or Mbappé, whose rise came from the age of 20 when he won the great trophy? From Gerd Müller to Just Fontaine, from Kocsis to Rahn, we will address this discussion below.
SB Market Index: How We Evaluate the Greatest World Cup Players
This evaluation combines a detailed statistical analysis of individual World Cup goalscoring achievements with expert perception to provide a comprehensive ranking.
Industry Insights
A curated analysis from top 10 football and sports media sources measures how prominently each player is featured in discussions of the greatest World Cup players of all time.
| Source \ Player | Miroslav Klose | Ronaldo Nazário | Gerd Müller | Lionel Messi | Just Fontaine | Pelé | Kylian Mbappé | Sándor Kocsis | Jürgen Klinsmann | Helmut Rahn |
| Wikipedia top scorers list | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| BBC / FourFourTwo “best WC players | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| GiveMeSport “greatest WC players” | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Times Of India top 5 scorers | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| The18 “best WC players ever” | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| FootballCritic “top scorers” | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| FourFourTwo top scorers list | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Total Mentions | 6 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 6 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 2 |
SB Score
| Player | Goals Scored | Matches Played | Goals per Match | SB Score |
| Sándor Kocsis | 11 | 5 | 2.20 | 0.959 |
| Just Fontaine | 13 | 6 | 2.17 | 0.957 |
| Gerd Müller | 14 | 13 | 1.08 | 0.627 |
| Pelé | 12 | 14 | 0.86 | 0.573 |
| Ronaldo Nazário | 15 | 19 | 0.79 | 0.551 |
| Kylian Mbappé | 12 | 14 | 0.86 | 0.548 |
| Helmut Rahn | 10 | 10 | 1.00 | 0.540 |
| Miroslav Klose | 16 | 24 | 0.67 | 0.514 |
| Jürgen Klinsmann | 11 | 17 | 0.65 | 0.447 |
| Lionel Messi | 13 | 26 | 0.50 | 0.409 |
This score is calculated based on historical World Cup goalscoring metrics: Goals Per Match (45% weightage), Total Goals Scored (35% weightage), and total Matches Played (20% weightage). The raw stats are used to calculate the final SB Score.
SB Market Index
| Rank | Player | SB Score | Industry Insights | SB Market Index |
| 1 | Pelé | 0.573 | 7 | 5.715 |
| 2 | Ronaldo Nazário | 0.551 | 7 | 5.710 |
| 3 | Gerd Müller | 0.627 | 7 | 5.725 |
| 4 | Miroslav Klose | 0.514 | 6 | 4.903 |
| 5 | Lionel Messi | 0.409 | 6 | 4.882 |
| 6 | Just Fontaine | 0.957 | 6 | 4.991 |
| 7 | Sándor Kocsis | 0.959 | 5 | 4.192 |
| 8 | Kylian Mbappé | 0.548 | 5 | 4.109 |
| 9 | Jürgen Klinsmann | 0.447 | 3 | 2.489 |
| 10 | Helmut Rahn | 0.540 | 2 | 1.708 |
Pelé, Ronaldo, and Müller: The Consensus Titans
When it comes to the greatness of the World Cup, three names always come to mind: Pelé, Ronaldo Nazário and Gerd Müller. Even though they all come from different generations, each one has made an enormous contribution to the history of this monumental tournament.
Pelé, the child prodigy, won three World Cups and scored 12 goals in 14 matches. With seven mentions in our specialist sources and a solid SB Score, his quality remains unrivaled.
Meanwhile, Ronaldo Nazário won the hearts of fans with his return in 2002, with a total of 15 goals in 19 appearances. The way he broke through the opponents' nets and his unmistakable style of penetrating the box managed to bring him to the memory of many, and his top score in Industry Insights reflects this lasting admiration.
And then there is Gerd Müller, simply the definition of efficiency. With 14 goals in just 13 games, his astonishing goals-per-game ratio helped lift West Germany to glory. "Der Bomber" was a truly lethal footballer.
Klose and Messi: The Volume vs. Impact Debate
Miroslav Klose and Lionel Messi are two players who have reached the top of the World Cup in two completely different ways.
Klose holds a record that may never be broken, 16 goals in 24 World Cup matches. That level of consistency across four tournaments is astonishing, especially for a player who wasn't necessarily considered all that great at club level. He was never the brightest, but his positioning, discipline and ability to be there at key moments have made him Germany's perfect assassin. Despite his status as a top scorer, his goals per game ratio (0.67) is lower than others on the list, slightly weighing on his SB Score.
Messi's story is a bit more romantic. After years of disappointment with Argentina, he finally won the trophy in 2022, providing a Hollywood story for that tournament. He scored 13 of his goals in 26 matches, but he also contributed decisively in other ways, by being a leader in the dressing room and contributing enormously with his passes. Messi is slightly lower in our model due to his goals per game rate, but his six mentions in Industry Insights show that he is a player who cannot be left out of this list.
The Efficiency Kings: Fontaine and Kocsis
Fontaine and Sándor Kocsis lived in a time when goals were scored very often. Fontaine's 13 goals in just 6 matches at the 1958 World Cup remains an all-time record, almost impossible to match. And Kocsis? He scored 11 times in 5 matches during Hungary's golden era in 1954. Their goals-per-match ratio - 2.17 for Fontaine and 2.20 for Kocsis - is the highest in World Cup history, earning them the top two spots in our SB score.
Statistically, they are unmatched. But when it comes to overall rankings in the SB Market Index, they sit outside the top three. Largely due to their lower Industry Insights scores, they are often omitted from today's lists of "greatest players of all time," perhaps because they appeared in only one tournament and played in eras less familiar to younger fans.
Still, their records stand the test of time. Fontaine and Kocsis may not have Instagram pages today, but their explosive efficiency on the world stage remains one of the sport's most remarkable achievements.
Conclusion on the World Cup's Greatest Players
There are two schools of thought when it comes to assessing the greatest footballer in World Cup history. One is about legacy and story, and the other is about numbers, figures, statistics. Industry Insights clearly promotes the legends of yesteryear: Pelé, Ronaldo Nazário and Gerd Müller, all widely celebrated across generations and in the media as the tournament’s icons par excellence. Their mix of titles, goals and cultural impact keeps them at the forefront of almost every conversation about the “greatest players of all time”.
But the SB Score tells a slightly different story. It highlights players like Just Fontaine and Sándor Kocsis, whose record-breaking efficiency, averaging over two goals per game, sets a standard that few have ever reached or will ever reach. It was indeed a completely different era and it’s hard to compare, but it’s there and it has to be taken into account.
Ultimately, the debate is not limited to focusing on a single great footballer, but to understanding what each player contributed and how they contributed in those moments. Because what matters most is the eye of the beholder and the feelings that were transmitted by that player.
With a strong background in journalism and years of experience in sports commentary, Dragoș Șoneriu has written about every aspect of sport, from match reports and features to tactical analyses and investigative pieces. A lifelong Arsenal fan, he dreams of seeing his beloved team lift the Premier League trophy. Outside of work, Dragoș collects anything football-related, from stickers and mugs to vintage shirts and scarves.