No one has got close to the phenomenal pair for six years but Neymar, Kevin De Bruyne and Kylian Mbappé are lurking on a remarkably strong 2017 list

And so Lionel Messi returns to the top. After finishing second to Cristiano Ronaldo last year he reclaims first place in the Guardian’s top 100 male footballers list for 2017.

The 100 best footballers in the world 2017 Read more

It was our biggest survey yet, with 169 judges from 63 different countries voting, and the margin between the top two was minimal. Messi finished only 42 points ahead of Ronaldo (6,582 to 6,540) and yet again the pair were miles ahead of the rest.

Neymar, who finished third, had a final score of 5,934 and the gap to fourth-placed Kevin De Bruyne (4,586) was even bigger.

Messi and Ronaldo have, between them, won all six years of the Guardian’s top 100 footballers and while some may find that tedious I find the battle between the two fascinating.

Messi has won the award four times (2012, 2013, 2015 and 2017) with Ronaldo claiming it twice (2014 and 2016). On each occasion the other player has finished second. No one has been near them for six years. Soon someone will overtake them but for the moment we should cherish their incredible talent and wonderful consistency. We will surely never see the like again.

So who are the rising stars who may one day get to No1? De Bruyne and Neymar have already been mentioned and they should, at 26 and 25 years old respectively, be approaching their peak. Neymar is up two places on the list and De Bruyne nine. If Paris Saint-Germain win the Champions League this season one suspects Neymar will have a big chance to finish top.

But there are plenty of threats further down the list too. The highest new entry is Neymar’s PSG team-mate Kylian Mbappé, who enters at No8 after an incredible year. He is the youngest player on our top 100 list, having turned 19 on 20 December, with Christian Pulisic, who is three months older, also a new entry at No77. Two 18-year-olds also received votes but not enough to get into the top 100: Ajax’s Matthijs de Ligt and Milan’s Gianluigi Donnarumma.

Play Video 1:17 The top 10 footballers on the planet in 2017 – video

The strength of the list is showcased by some of the players who just missed out. Fernandinho, Alexandre Lacazette, Thomas Müller, Roberto Firmino and Leon Goretzka were positioned between 101 and 105 with players such as Jérôme Boateng, Julian Draxler, Ivan Perisic, Kyle Walker, Kamil Glik and Marek Hamsik also narrowly missing out.

There are 17 Spanish players on the list – making Spain the best-represented country for a sixth consecutive year. France are second with 12 and Brazil third with 10. Portugal, who won Euro 2016, have lost five players and are down to two (Ronaldo and Bernardo Silva).

The Premier League remains the competition with the most players with 33, four more than La Liga, with Serie A (14), Bundesliga (13) and Ligue 1 (11) also featuring. This is the first time no other league has made the list, with the top five continuing to hoover up the best talent.

The complete statistics behind our list of 2017's best footballers Read more

Real Madrid and Barcelona, who meet in the clásico on Saturday, have a combined 23 players on the list. Real, who won La Liga and the Champions League in 2017, provide 13 of those players, the joint-highest we have seen. The dominance of the two teams is no surprise but that does not mean it will stay that way. We may have a new Champions League winner, with Manchester City among the early frontrunners.

Pep Guardiola’s side have been in outstanding form and will be hard to beat if they play with the same intensity throughout the season. City have eight players on the list, from De Bruyne at No4 to Benjamin Mendy at No97. They were joint third with PSG and Bayern Munich when it comes to most players on the list and that was with Ederson and Nicolás Otamendi joining Fernandinho and Walker among the ranks of those who narrowly missed out.

The list, as always, has led to a huge amount of discussion online and on social media – and rightly so. It is so difficult to judge players from different leagues and playing in different positions. Is Radja Nainggolan (No72) actually a better player than Hugo Lloris (No81)? Should Christian Eriksen (No25) be higher up than his team-mate Dele Alli (No31)? And what about Harry Kane being the fifth-best player in the world (his goal record this year suggests that he should be in the top 10 and goals, after all, decide games).

It is almost an impossible task but our hope is the fact that we have so many highly respected journalists and former players means our list is as accurate as it possibly can be.

To vote, though, is fiendishly difficult. As one judge said last year when he emailed in his votes: “As soon as I had pressed the send button I was disagreeing with myself.”