World Cup Rank: The 50 best players in the 2026 tournament - ESPN

As silly as it might seem, whoever wins the 2026 World Cup is going to have an outsize impact on who the soccer world decides is the best soccer player in the world.

Sure, there are 11 players on each team. And OK, fine, the best players have possession of the ball for only about three total minutes every match. And yeah, it's entirely possible that the best soccer player in the world right now had the «misfortune» of being born in, say, Georgia — no, not the one with the peaches.

But that doesn't stop Ballon d'Or voters from leaning aggressively toward selecting a player from whatever team won the World Cup whenever the vote falls in a World Cup year.

To put it more specifically: If Portugal win the World Cup, there's a very real chance that Cristiano Ronaldo wins the Ballon d'Or — despite the fact that he's 41 years old and hasn't had a real impact on the highest levels of club soccer in at least five years.

So, ahead of the tournament, let's take stock of who the best soccer players at the World Cup — and by proxy, in the world — might actually be and rank them.

International soccer is a different game from what you see at the club level — less training time, much less pressing, fewer possession patterns — but the club level is still by far the highest level, and it's where these guys spend 90% of their professional lives. So, this list is mainly based on the past couple of seasons of club performance.

No one can predict how well any of these players will do at the World Cup with their national teams — try as we all might — but what we can say for certain is how good these players are generally as they head into the World Cup, which begins on Thursday.

To make this ranking more useful, the 50 selections are separated