Welcome to the Guardian’s choice of the world’s top 100 footballers for 2014. Led by Hernán Crespo, Gilberto Silva, Slaven Bilic and Dietmar Hamann, our panel of 73 experts from 28 nations compiled a countdown of the greatest players on the planet. Click on individual players to read more about their year.

• Barney Ronay: Ronaldo overtakes Messi as No1

• Read the full list of judges and top 100 rules

• How our judges voted: the complete statistics

• Datablog: numbers in full

• In video: members of our expert panel discuss Nos 40-11

• In video: see the panel discuss their selections for Nos 70-41

• In video: the panel discuss Nos 100-71

• Look back at the top 100 from 2013