Pelé has taken the top spot in the Guardian's list of the top 100 all-time World Cup footballers. See the full list and how it breaks down by nationality, decade and goals

Pelé has been named the best World Cup footballer of all time in the Guardian's list of the top 100 players to have taken part in the tournament.

Six English players made it on to the list, with Bobby Charlton ranking highest at 14th position. Bobby Moore (20), Gordon Banks (41), Gary Lineker (47), Geoff Hurst (54) and Paul Gascoigne (66) also featured on the list.

The ranking, which has slowly been revealed in a countdown from the 26 May, is now published in full and the world's top 100 World Cup footballers are listed at the bottom of this article for you to view.

Between them, the top 100 have notched up 1,188 appearances, scored 387 goals and played for 23 different national teams – one even played for both Italy and Argentina.

1990s - Britpop, crop tops and er... World Cup legends

We broke the players down by the first tournament each of them played in. The standout decade was the 1990s, which produced 22 of the names on our list. Although, some would say this is an unfair breakdown because every other decade has two tournaments rather than three. The year 1998 also saw the number of teams increase from 24 to 32.

Nevertheless, the 1990, 1994 and 1998 World Cups produced several legends that secured some of the highest spots on the ranking, including Ronaldo (4) and Zinedine Zidane (6).

Four players were chosen from the first three World Cups in 1930, 1934 and 1938 including Italian Giuseppe Meazza (40), who featured in the latter two. No tournaments took place in the 1940s due to the second world war.

Top country - Brazil, of course

Unsurprisingly the country of Ronaldo, Romario, Rivaldo, Pelé, Garrincha and Jarzinho (we could keep going) is the country with the highest number of players in the top 100.

This year's hosts find their closest rivals in Italy, who had 15 players selected by the judges - 15, that is, excluding Luis Monti who took to the pitch for Argentina in 1930 but switched to Italy four years later.

Country-hopping still goes on, with the highest profile example this year being Diego Costa of Spain (formerly Brazil) - although that is only because he had not played a competitive match in a Brazil shirt.

Taking a broader perspective and looking at the breakdown by continent puts Europe on top by far, with almost two thirds of the players.



Africa provides three. Asia, North America and Oceania do not feature.

Three's a charm - average number of World Cups

Players in the top 100 took part in an average of 2.6 tournaments. As the chart below shows, 40 featured in three World Cups while 35 were involved in two.

Ten players made the list despite only making an appearance at one World Cup each. The true outlier though is Lothar Matthäus (Germany), who took part in five.

Over the course of his international career, the defender took part in 25 World Cup games and was included in the squad for every single tournament during the 1980s and 1990s.

Most goals per appearance - Sandor Kocsis (Hungary)

Brazilian striker Ronaldo (4) is the World Cup's most prolific goal scorer with 15 goals across three tournaments (he was picked for the 1994 squad, but did not play).

However,when you adjust that for the number of appearances made by each player then you get a more surprising top scorer.

Hungarian Sandor Kocsis only featured in the 1954 World Cup, playing five matches. His impact was huge though. He scored 11 goals, which gives him a dynamite 2.2 goals per game (gpg).

That included four goals in a group stage match against the eventual winners West Germany - Hungary were runners up.

He was very closely followed by the French player Just Fontaine who scored 13 in six - which is just below Kocsis before rounding.

When you exclude goalkeepers, the average gpg for all players in the top 100 was 0.4. The number one player Pelé had an impressive 0.8 gpg.

The top 100 in full

Methodology

A 40-strong panel of judges, split into three categories: World Cup legends, Guardian journalists and international experts, helped compile the list. Each category of judge accounts for a third of the overall score. Judges were asked one simple question: “who have been the greatest players in the history of the World Cup?”

Each judge was left to define greatness on their own terms.



Judges were asked to choose 40 names each, and rank their selection in order from 1-40, No1 being their choice of the greatest player ever at the World Cup. The No1 choice of each judge was awarded 40pts, No2 given 39pts, down to 1pt for their No40 choice. You can read more about the methodology here.

There's a lot included in the data below, including the original and weighted totals for the judge's scores. Can you do anything more with the numbers?

Download the data



• DATA: download the full spreadsheet

More open data

Data journalism and data visualisations from the Guardian

Development and aid data

• Search the world’s global development data with our gateway

Can you do more with this data?

• Contact us at data@theguardian.com

• Follow us on Twitter

• Like us on Facebook