Jorginho misses out on top spot despite Chelsea and Italy triumphs

Who is the most important player in a football team? Is it the goalkeeper who stops the goals going in, or the forward who scores them? Or is it the midfielder who contributes to both?

That debate has raged for more than 100 years and is unlikely to be solved in 800-odd words on this page but it is a pertinent question as we survey this year’s Guardian top 100 male footballers in 2021.

Once again a forward tops the list, Robert Lewandowski defending his crown from 2020 but with a smaller share of the vote. He is one of only four players to have won the award since its inception in 2012, Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Luka Modric being the other three. The Croat’s triumph in 2018 was the only time a non-forward has won the prize.

This year Jorginho was in with a shout of becoming our fifth winner, having won both the Champions League and the European Championship during an outstanding year with Chelsea and Italy. I love a midfielder – especially if he or she is defensively astute – and put the Italian first on my list but in the end he could not compete with the goalscoring prowess of Lewandowski, Messi, Mohamed Salah and Karim Benzema and finished fifth.

Jorginho is joined by two other midfielders in the top 10 – his Chelsea teammate N’Golo Kanté and Manchester City’s Kevin De Bruyne – but the whole list is dominated by forwards – 42 of the 100 play up front.

Club-wise we have a shift at the top again, Manchester City replacing Liverpool with the most players on the list, having won the Premier League and reached the Champions League final. They have two more players on the list than the side that beat them at the Estádio do Dragão, Chelsea.

Two clubs who have featured heavily in previous years, Barcelona and Juventus, drop out of the top five, mirroring the turbulent times they have had in 2021. Both have four players on the list – compare that with Barça’s four players in the top 15 in our first list in 2012 – and the Catalan side are rescued by the appearance of two youngsters, Gavi and Pedri, while Juve benefit from Italy’s win at Euro 2020 with Giorgio Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci included.

The delayed Euros and the Copa América bear a heavy influence on the standings when it comes to nationalities in the top 100. England and Italy are top with the Copa finalists Argentina and Brazil also among the top eight countries on the list.

Germany’s poor showing at Euro 2020 is reflected in that they drop from 12 players (the most) in last year’s rankings to nine this time. Bayern’s failure to regain their Champions League crown doubtless played a part too with every player featured from the Bavarian club dropping down in position, except Lewandowski.

Players from 30 countries received votes this year, Denmark having a record four players on the list after their Euro 2020 heroics and Senegal moving up to two with Édouard Mendy joining the top-100 regular Sadio Mané.

The Premier League’s standing as the most powerful league in the world continues and, frankly, is reaching a somewhat disturbing level with 42 of the 100 players on the list coming from the English top flight. That is seven more than in 2020 and partly, of course, a reflection of the Champions League final’s all-English composition and England’s progress to the Euro 2020 showpiece.

It is, nevertheless, a worrying trend as we want teams from as many countries as possible to challenge for the main continental prizes. This year we carried an interview with the Bayer Leverkusen CEO, Fernando Carro, who expressed his concern over the Premier League’s dominant position saying his club, regularly in the top five of the Bundesliga, lost out on a player in the summer because they could not compete financially with a promoted team from England.

“At the end of the day you can make money from transfers,” he said. “English clubs pay the transfers, we get the money, but then that just means the entire Bundesliga is like a development league for the Premier League.

“Even Borussia Dortmund have to sell players to the Premier League. The only club that can compete at the moment from the Bundesliga is Bayern Munich.”

La Liga is still the second highest league but down two players from 2020. It does have, in Gavi, the youngest player ever to appear on the list, at the age of 17, beating Gianluigi Donnarumma by a few months from when the Italian made his debut on the list in 2016.

At the other end of the spectrum Zlatan Ibrahimovic appears on the list for a ninth time despite having turned 40 in October.

Every year it feels harsh not to mention the unlucky players who finished just outside the top 100. In 2021 Alexander Isak was particularly unfortunate having featured on 25 voting slips, yet finished a mere three points behind the 100th-placed Pierre-Emile Højbjerg.

Theo Hernández, Andy Robertson, Kalvin Phillips and Pau Torres were also very close to making the list. An impressive 325 players had at least one vote this year, showcasing the vast array of talent on display around the world.