Ronaldo, Messi, Neymar: The top five Champions League players in each major position

The Champions League is back in business with only 16 clubs still in with a chance of conquering Europe in the 2021/22 season.

With Liverpool vs Inter Milan and Paris Saint-Germain vs Real Madrid on the horizon to name just a few mouth-watering ties, it’s fair to say that the return of UEFA’s flagship tournament is a welcome one.

Besides, it truly is the club competition in the men’s game where the best players in the business slug it out most often whether that’s Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Virgil van Dijk or any number of star-studded icons.

As such, ranking and rating the best players in the Champions League is no easy task because it essentially involves casting one’s opinion on the finest male footballers in the world more generally.

But that’s never stopped us here at GIVEMESPORT and on the back of naming the Premier League’s top five players in each position this season, we’ve now turned our attention to Europe’s premier competition.

However, instead of focusing entirely on the 2021/22 campaign, we’re basing our verdict – other opinions are available – on a mixture of current form as well as overall quality to mitigate recency bias.

And in terms of the positions themselves, there are obviously crossovers that happen for certain players, so we’re airdropping them into the category that they’ve occupied the most this season when in doubt.

After all, if we were to list every possible position down to left-sided centre-backs and false nines, then we’d be here forever and that’s just no fun.

So, without further ado, be sure to check out who we consider to be the top five players from across the remaining 16 Champions League clubs in each major position down below:

5. Jan Oblak (Atletico Madrid)

4. Thibaut Courtois