Who is the Greatest Soccer Player of All Time? We Have the Definitive Answer

The rain was coming down in sheets outside my Manila hotel window, the kind of tropical downpour that turns streets into rivers within minutes. I watched through the water-streaked glass as a group of kids continued their soccer match in a flooded parking lot, their laughter cutting through the storm's roar. They'd fashioned goalposts from discarded PVC pipes, and the ball—once white, now brown with mud—splashed through puddles as they played with the kind of raw passion that reminded me why I fell in love with this sport thirty years ago.

Just last month, this same city had hosted something entirely different—the 2023 FIBA Basketball World Cup, with both group and knockout stage matches held right here in Manila. I'd attended several games, watching giants like Dončić and Edwards dominate the court, and yet here were these children, playing a completely different sport with equal fervor in impossible conditions. It got me thinking about greatness across different contexts, about how we measure excellence when circumstances vary so dramatically. Which naturally led me to ponder the question that has haunted football pubs and living rooms for generations: who is the greatest soccer player of all time? We have the definitive answer, though you might not like it.

Let me take you back to 2012. I was in Barcelona's Camp Nou, watching Lionel Messi score five goals against Bayer Leverkusen in a single Champions League match. The stadium felt like a cathedral, and we were all witnesses to something divine. The numbers speak for themselves—672 goals for Barcelona, 106 for Argentina, six Ballon d'Or trophies, though if we're being honest, I lost count after the fourth. But statistics alone can't capture the magic of watching Messi dribble through six defenders as if they were training cones. There's something almost supernatural about how the ball seems magnetically attached to his left foot.

Yet whenever I make this argument at sports bars, someone inevitably brings up Cristiano Ronaldo. And they're not wrong to do so. I saw Ronaldo play for Real Madrid against Atlético in 2017, and the man scored a hat-trick that felt like pure athletic domination. His 815 official career goals across all competitions is frankly ridiculous, and his five Champions League titles can't be ignored. The man has reinvented his playing style three separate times, adapting his game as he aged in ways that defy normal athletic decline. But here's where it gets complicated—greatness isn't just about numbers or trophies. If it were, we'd all be bowing before Pelé's 1,283 total career goals or his three World Cup victories.

I remember arguing about this very topic with a Brazilian journalist during the FIBA games here in Manila last month. We were watching Team USA struggle against Lithuania, and he made an interesting point—context matters. Just as basketball looks different in Manila than it does in Milwaukee, soccer evolves across eras. Diego Maradona's 1986 World Cup performance, for instance, happened in an era where defenders could basically commit assault without getting carded. The fact that he dominated that tournament the way he did—scoring five goals and creating five more—might be more impressive than anything we've seen since.

The truth is, my definitive answer changes depending on the day. Some mornings I wake up convinced it's Messi. Other days, I rewatch Zidane's 2002 Champions League final volley and question everything. Occasionally, I even find myself watching old clips of Johan Cruyff and wondering if the true GOAT died in 2016. But if you put a gun to my head and forced me to choose, I'd say Messi edges it—but only just. His combination of statistical dominance, longevity, and pure magical artistry gives him the slightest of advantages over his rivals. Though I fully acknowledge this is like choosing between different shades of gold—they're all precious, just slightly different hues of brilliance.

What fascinates me most about this endless debate is how it mirrors the discussions we had during the basketball world cup here. People argued about whether modern NBA stars could compete with legends from the 90s, whether international players had finally caught up to American dominance. The same fundamental questions apply to soccer—how do we compare across different eras, different leagues, different styles of play? The beauty is that we'll never have a perfect answer, which is precisely why we keep having the conversation. The children playing in the Manila rain don't care about any of this, of course. For them, greatness is measured in the joy of the game, in the perfect pass that slices through rainwater, in the triumphant shout when the ball finds its way between those makeshift PVC pipes. And maybe, just maybe, they've got the right idea after all.