Football is a great leveller. Not everyone goes to a school with a rugby pitch, and not everyone can afford a pony. However, from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to the slums of Nairobi to the playgrounds of Monaco and Beverly Hills, you will see children kicking a football about. Perhaps the way football stars have often risen from humble origins to excel in the sport enables the best to become icons both on and off the pitch, truly becoming heroes of nations.
Arguments over the greatest 10 World Cup heroes have kept friends debating into the small hours for decades. Such arguments will continue for as long as football is played. But here, ahead of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, are 10 we think have been the best:
10. Zinedine Zidane
His talismanic leadership, marked by 31 goals in 108 matches for France, transformed the national team into a force far greater than its parts.
As a coach, he went on to win three Champions League titles and La Liga twice with Real Madrid.
9. Jimmy Greaves
Already a star at home, Greaves gained international recognition after rescuing a pitch-invading dog that had evaded the Brazilian greats during England’s 1962 World Cup quarter-final. Brazil’s Garrincha took the dog home, and Greaves became known in Brazil as “Garrincha’s dog-catcher.”
Greaves was part of the 1966 World Cup-winning squad, but a savage injury inflicted by France’s Joseph Bonnel that required 14 stitches kept Greaves out of the final.
Greaves scored six hat tricks in an England shirt, a still-standing record.
The 1966 campaign continues to be a focal point of English identity. The squad is universally adored, and Greaves became a broadcaster, welcomed into the nation’s living rooms for decades.
Greaves was eventually awarded a World Cup winners’ medal by Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2009.
8. Ferenc Puskas
He scored 84 goals in 85 matches for Hungary and made four appearances for Spain. Hungary was so dominant under Puskas that the 1954 World Cup final was the only game they lost in the decade.
He scored 702 goals from 705 career games. The giant of European football was a vocal supporter of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and defected to Spain while on tour after the Soviet Army killed 2,500 of his countrymen while crushing the uprising.
He returned to Hungary after the collapse of Communism and remains worshipped by Hungarians.
7. Lothar Matthaus
The only German to be named FIFA World Player of the Year, Matthaus holds the record for most World Cup games (25). His natural leadership gave him a commanding presence on the field, and his technical ability and tactical awareness gave him an unstoppable dominance on the pitch.
The bullish Diego Maradona called him the toughest opponent he had ever faced.
6. Miroslav Klose
A physical powerhouse of a forward, his stature belied his speed. He scored 71 goals in 137 matches in a German shirt. He also scored 16 World Cup goals. No one has ever scored more. He was prolific, and a good guy.
5. Ronaldo
Four years later, he was named Player of the Tournament after steering Brazil into the final, only to suffer a convulsive fit just hours before the game. He scored twice in the 2002 World Cup final to add to his six in the competition earlier, once more lifting the trophy.
A fourth World Cup appearance saw Ronaldo score a then-record-breaking 15th goal.
But it was how he did it that set the world on fire: Speed, control, vision, total mastery of the ball, explosive runs, juggling the ball past defenders with acrobatic flicks and tricks and the goals.
4. Franz Beckenbauer
After playing in the 1966 World Cup final loss to England, he got revenge four years later, scoring a searing goal to knock the English out and send West Germany to the semi-final.
But three World Cup appearances weren’t enough for him. As Germany marched towards reunification and a new era, Beckenbauer guided the national team as a manager to win the 1990 World Cup. In later years, he led Germany’s successful bid to host the 2006 World Cup, a campaign later investigated by FIFA over alleged corruption.
3. John Cruyff
Football for Cruyff wasn’t just an athletic sport, but a blending of mind, body and artistry – an exercise in simplicity and beauty.
A creative playmaker with a unique understanding of the geometry of players’ pitch positions, he led his team like an orchestra conductor. The Netherlands never lost a game in which he scored. And he scored a lot – 33 goals in 48 international matches.
Cruyff led the Netherlands to the 1974 World Cup final, scoring twice against Argentina and knocking out then-champions Brazil. Only Franz Beckenbauer’s defensive heroics frustrated Cruyff’s efforts on goal and kept the Dutchman from lifting the trophy.
Cruyff didn’t play in the 1978 tournament after a kidnapping attempt led him to reassess his priorities on football’s global stage. But his was a revolutionary legacy, not only at Ajax and Barcelona, where he both played and managed, but also for the Dutch national team and the game’s future. Total Football, “tiki-taka,” and the Cruyff turn all speak to his mastery of how football should be played.
2. Diego Maradona
That game epitomised the two sides of Maradona: the raw, prodigious talent of the Argentinian captain, mixed with an absolute disregard for rules, the shameless arrogance of a genius born in the slums, the belief that one’s innate talent sets you apart from—and above—the mere mortals around you.
Argentina went on to win the 1986 World Cup, 10 years after Maradona had made his first appearance for the national side at age 16. He earned 91 caps and scored 34 goals for his country, but no one can know in how much more glory he could have basked were it not for his 1991 arrest for cocaine possession as his off-field life started to spiral. He played in four World Cup tournaments but did not finish the 1994 tournament after testing positive for ephedrine, a banned substance.
After the final whistle blew on his playing days, he supported various left-wing causes, protesting against the war in Iraq, arguing with the pope over the distribution of wealth, and condemning Israel’s bombing of Gaza. Maradona sported Che Guevara and Fidel Castro tattoos and was Hugo Chavez’s guest of honour at the 2007 Copa America.
After his death at age 60 from cardiac arrest, Maradona’s popularity in Argentina was such that his coffin, draped in the national flag and bedecked with football jerseys, lay in state at the presidential palace as tens of thousands of mourners paid their respects.
1. Pele
In 1958, when he scored his first World Cup goal – the result of a scuffed mishit that ended Wales’s World Cup dreams for the following seven decades – could anyone have known the giant he was to become?
With either foot, Pele could produce the magic that inspired generations. Off the pitch, as one of the first truly global Black sports superstars, his outspoken support for improving the lives of the poor made him a national hero.
Pele lifted the World Cup three times: 1958, 1962, and 1970. He remains Brazil’s leading goal scorer with 77 goals in 92 games. He was so famous and beloved all around the world that in 1969, both sides in Nigeria’s brutal civil war agreed to a ceasefire so they could watch Pele play in an exhibition match in Lagos.
A prolific goal scorer, he could play from any position on the field with vision and flair. He was never selfish, linking with other team players to produce generous assists. His charismatic leadership on and off the pitch led to a legacy lauded by figures as diverse as Nelson Mandela and Henry Kissinger.
“There’s Pelé the man and then Pelé the player,” France’s Michel Platini said. “And to play like Pelé is to play like God.”
