Football is a great leveler. Not everyone goes to a school with a rugby field or can afford a pony.
But from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro and the slums of Nairobi to the playgrounds of Monaco and Beverly Hills, children can be seen kicking soccer balls.
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Perhaps it is the way soccer stars often rise from impoverished backgrounds to shine in the world of sport that allows the best players to become icons on and off the pitch, truly national heroes.
The debate over who the 10 greatest World Cup heroes has been has kept friends up into the night for decades.
Discussions like this will continue as long as soccer is played. But ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, here are the 10 teams we think are the best.
10. Zinedine Zidane
Zidane was one of the game’s greatest and most controversial players, winning the 1998 World Cup with France at home by scoring twice in the final.
Injury nearly missed France’s short-lived 2002 World Cup appearance, but he was named the tournament’s best player in 2006 despite being sent off for his infamous headbutt in the final against Italy. When the team returned home, thousands of fans lined the streets of Paris shouting Zidane’s name.
Scoring 31 goals in 108 games for France, his talismanic leadership shaped the national team into something much greater than the sum of its parts.
As a manager, he won the Champions League three times and La Liga twice with Real Madrid.
9. Jimmy Greaves
Even the great Bobby Moore, whose statue greeted fans arriving at Wembley Stadium, was not as beloved by English fans as Jimmy Greaves.
Already a star in his home country, Greaves became internationally known for rescuing a dog that had entered the pitch in England’s 1962 World Cup quarter-final, avoiding Brazil’s great players. Mr. Garrincha took the dog home to Brazil, and Mr. Greaves became known in Brazil as “Garrincha’s dog catcher.”
Greaves was part of the 1966 World Cup winning team, but was unable to play in the final after France’s Joseph Bonner suffered a serious injury that required 14 stitches.
Greaves scored six hat-tricks in an England shirt, a record that still stands.
The 1966 campaign remained a focus of England’s identity, with the team widely loved and Greaves becoming a broadcaster and a fixture in the nation’s kitchen for decades.
Mr Greaves was eventually presented with a World Cup winner’s medal by Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2009.
8. Ferenc Puskas
Puskas was the captain of the Mighty Magyars, a golden Hungarian team that flourished under the influence of Jimmy Hogan’s Total Football.
He scored 84 goals in 85 games for Hungary and played four times for Spain. Hungary were so dominant under Puskas that the 1954 World Cup final was the only match Hungary lost in the last 10 years.
He scored 702 goals in 705 career games. The giant of European football was a vocal supporter of the Hungarian revolution in 1956, and defected to Spain during a tour after Soviet troops killed 2,500 of his countrymen during the suppression of the rebellion.
He returned to Hungary after the fall of communism and is still revered by Hungarians.
7. Lothar Matthaus
Matthaus, Germany’s most capped player, has scored 23 goals in 150 international games. He played in five World Cups as a box-to-box midfielder, contributing to West Germany’s victory in the 1990 tournament.
The only German to be named FIFA World Player of the Year, Matthäus holds the record for most World Cup appearances (25). His natural leadership gave him a commanding presence on the field, and his technical ability and tactical awareness combined to give him an unstoppable dominance on the pitch.
The bullish Diego Maradona called him the toughest opponent he had ever faced.
6. Miroslav Klose
It’s rare to win an award simply for being a good person, but Germany’s record goalscorer, somersaulting Miroslav Klose, has won it more than once. In a career marked by fair play and decorum – he famously refused to accept a penalty awarded during a club match because he knew the referee was in the wrong – Klose scored in four World Cups and finally lifted the trophy in 2014.
He was a physically gifted forward with speed befitting his height. He scored 71 goals in 137 games in the German uniform. He also scored 16 goals in the World Cup. No player has scored more points. He was prolific and a good guy.
5. Ronaldo
‘The Phenomenon’ reinvented the role of the striker while scoring 62 goals in 98 appearances for Brazil. He lifted the 1994 World Cup trophy at just 17 years old.
Four years later, he was named player of the match after leading Brazil to the final, but suffered a cramp a few hours before the match. He scored twice in the 2002 World Cup final, adding to his six goals in previous competitions, as he lifted the trophy again.
Playing in his fourth World Cup, Ronaldo scored his 15th World Cup goal, breaking the record at the time.
But it was his method that set the world on fire. Speed, control, vision, perfect mastery of the ball, explosive runs, juggling the ball past defenders with acrobatic flicks and tricks, and goals.
4. Franz Beckenbauer
The editors of World Cup Heroes would not be able to exclude Franz Beckenbauer, who, along with Didier Deschamps and Mario Zagallo, is one of only three players to lift the World Cup trophy as both a player and a coach. Despite playing as a defender, Beckenbauer played 103 games for West Germany, scoring 14 goals, and was captain of the 1974 winning team.
After losing to England in the 1966 World Cup final, he got his revenge four years later, scoring a searing goal to defeat England and take West Germany to the semi-finals.
However, three World Cup appearances were not enough for him, and as Germany moved toward unification and a new era, Beckenbauer led his national team to victory in the 1990 World Cup as manager. In later years, he was instrumental in Germany’s successful bid for the 2006 World Cup. The campaign was later investigated by FIFA for corruption charges.
3. Johan Cruyff
A three-time Ballon d’Or winner and one of the most influential figures in Total Football’s sporting philosophy, he has brought a new level of sophistication to the game.
For Cruyff, soccer was more than just an athletic sport; it was a fusion of mind, body and artistry, an exercise in simplicity and beauty.
A creative playmaker with a unique understanding of the shape of players’ pitch positions, he led his team like a conductor of an orchestra. The Netherlands never lost a match in which he scored. And he scored a lot of goals – 33 in 48 international matches.
Cruyff led the Netherlands to the final of the 1974 World Cup, scoring twice against Argentina and defeating then-champions Brazil. It was only Franz Beckenbauer’s defensive heroics that derailed Cruyff’s goal effort and prevented the Dutchman from lifting the trophy.
Cruyff did not play in the 1978 tournament, having reevaluated his priorities on the world football stage in the wake of the kidnapping attempt. But his achievements were a revolutionary legacy, not only for Ajax and Barcelona, where he played and coached, but also for the future of the Dutch national team and the game itself. Total Football, ‘Tiki Taka’, Cruyff Turn – all speak to his mastery of how to play football.
2. Diego Maradona
The drug-addicted “Golden Boy” is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in football history. His 60-meter (66-yard) dribble past five England players in the 1986 World Cup quarter-finals, leading to the Goal of the Century, echoing the sport’s most famous non-penalty handball, a goal that became known as the Hand of God.
That match symbolized Maradona’s dual nature. The Argentine captain’s raw and prodigious talent and absolute disregard for the rules, the shameless arrogance of a genius, and the belief that his natural talent distinguishes him from the mediocrity around him, and more.
Ten years after Maradona made his first appearance for the national team at just 16 years old, Argentina won the 1986 World Cup.
He won 91 caps and scored 34 goals for his country, but who knows how much glory he would have been able to bask in had it not been for a cocaine possession arrest in 1991, when his life off the field began to spiral.
He competed in four World Cups, but was unable to complete the 1994 tournament after testing positive for the banned substance ephedrine.
After the final whistle during his playing days, he supported a variety of left-wing causes, including protesting the Iraq war, arguing with the Pope over wealth distribution, and condemning Israel’s bombing of Gaza. Maradona has tattoos of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, and was the guest of honor of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez at the 2007 Copa America.
Maradona was so popular in Argentina after he died of cardiac arrest at the age of 60 that his coffin, draped in a national flag and wearing a soccer jersey, was placed in order in the presidential palace as tens of thousands of mourners mourned.
1. Pele
Has there ever been a more successful soccer icon than Brazil’s Pele?
When he scored his first World Cup goal in 1958, it was a horribly misplaced shot that ended Wales’ World Cup dreams for the next 70 years, but could anyone have known that he would become a giant?
With either foot, Pele was able to create the kind of magic that inspired generations. Off the field, his outspoken support for improving the lives of the poor made him a national hero as one of the first true global black sports superstars.
Pele won the World Cup three times: in 1958, 1962 and 1970. With 77 goals in 92 games, he remains Brazil’s top scorer. He was so famous and loved around the world that in 1969 both sides of the Nigerian civil war agreed to a cease-fire so that they could watch Pele play in an exhibition match in Lagos.
A prolific goalscorer, he could play from any position on the field with vision and flair. He was never selfish and collaborated with other team members to provide generous assists. His charismatic leadership on and off the pitch led to a legacy admired by figures as diverse as Nelson Mandela and Henry Kissinger.
“There is Pele as a person and there is Pele as a player,” said France’s Michel Platini. “And to play like Pele is to play like God.”
