Three Croatians make Guardian’s 100 best footballers in the world list
- by croatiaweek
- in Sport
Joško Gvardiol and Luka Modrić
British newspaper The Guardian has released its annual list of the top 100 football players in the world in 2023, a list which this year includes three Croatian players.
Captain of the Croatian national team, Luka Modrić (Real Madrid), is the best-ranked Croatian in 25th place on the list, which has been an end of year feature since 2012.
21-year-old Manchester City defender Joško Gvardiol, who moved this past summer to the English and European champions, is next best ranked in 54th place.
Midfielder Marcelo Brozović, who plays at Al-Nassr in Saudi Arabia, is ranked 94th.
Marcelo Brozović (Photo credit: Антон Зайцев/CC BY-SA 3.0)
The Guardian compiled the ranking based on the votes of a jury consisting of 218 individuals. Judges awarded points to players in descending order of preference, with the top choice receiving 40 points and the 40th choice receiving 1 point.
The total votes were summed to calculate a raw score, and to reduce the impact of outliers, the highest individual score was subtracted. Players required votes from at least five judges to be eligible.
Luka Modrić (Photo credit: Светлана Бекетова/ soccer.ru/CC BY-SA 3.0)
According to them, the best player in the world is Norwegian striker Erling Haaland (Manchester City), followed by Jude Bellingham (Real Madrid), Kylian Mbappé (PSG), Harry Kane (Bayern), Rodri (Manchester City), Vinicius Junior (Real Madrid), and Mohamed Salah (Liverpool).
Argentinian forward Lionel Messi (Inter Miami) is positioned in 10th place, while Cristiano Ronaldo (Al-Nassr) is 27th. In 2018, Modrić was the best player in the world according to this selection.
You can see the full list here.
