The Century: All the numbers and statistics behind our countdown of the best players of the past two decades
The 100 players were drawn from three different continents and 25 different nations, with one significantly more prominent than the rest.
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Your support makes all the difference.This week at The Independent we counted down the top 100 footballers of the 21st century.
Ten of our sports writers submitted their top 50 players, and a highly complex algorithm then sifted the nominees into a 100-player long list.
Each day we revealed 20 more players from the countdown until Friday’s big reveal of the top 10 – take a look through the gallery below to see who finished where.
The 100 players were drawn from three different continents and 25 different nations, with one significantly more prominent than the rest.
Below we take a look at some of the numbers behind the countdown.
• The list drew from 25 different nations around the world, and three different continents: 73 players were European, 22 were South American and five were African. Spain was the most common nation (14 players), the most successful nation of the 21st century with two European Championships and a World Cup. Spain were ahead of England, Holland, Brazil and France (nine players each), and Italy, Argentina and Germany (eight each). Portugal (four), Uruguay (three), Sweden, Wales, Belgium and Ivory Coast (two each) were the only other nations with more than one player in the list.
• Likewise, when taking the league in which each player spent the majority of their career, the Spanish top flight was by far the most common. More than a third of the players on the list played most of their career in La Liga (37), ahead of the Premier League (30), Serie A (20), and the Bundesliga (10). There was one from the Scottish Premiership (Henrik Larsson), one from the Dutch Eredivisie (Wesley Sneijder) and one from the French Ligue 1 (Kylian Mbappe).
• The average current age of the list was 38, with a diverse spread of young and old. If the list taught us anything it’s that the 21st century isn’t a footballing era in itself but an amalgamation of several, stretching right back to Paolo Maldini, who was born before Neil Armstrong stepped on to the moon, and right up to Kylian Mbappe, who probably doesn’t remember life before 9/11.
• There were 16 left-footed players and 84 right-footed players in the list. Forwards and midfielders were the most popular positions (37 each), with 21 defenders and five goalkeepers.
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