Best XI, by the record book
Seventeen elevens, none of them anybody's opinion. Each is the highest-rated player available at every position across a slice of 85,000 real career records — the appearances, goals and honours footballers actually accumulated.
Last updated 18 August 2026
Every other list like this is an argument. This one is a computation, and you can check it: each name links to the squad it was drafted from, and each squad page links to the Wikidata record the figures came from. Where the data is wrong, the list will be wrong, and we would like to know — the derivation is set out in full in the methodology.
By decade
- The best XI of the 1930s — from 22 squads, 1,625 records
- The best XI of the 1940s — from 19 squads, 942 records
- The best XI of the 1950s — from 60 squads, 4,327 records
- The best XI of the 1960s — from 81 squads, 5,609 records
- The best XI of the 1970s — from 96 squads, 6,897 records
- The best XI of the 1980s — from 113 squads, 9,067 records
- The best XI of the 1990s — from 129 squads, 14,001 records
- The best XI of the 2000s — from 130 squads, 20,728 records
- The best XI of the 2010s — from 130 squads, 17,884 records
- The best XI of the 2020s — from 61 squads, 3,997 records
By competition
- The best XI of the English top flight — 20 teams, 16,491 records
- The best XI of the Italian top flight — 16 teams, 13,663 records
- The best XI of the Spanish top flight — 13 teams, 6,605 records
- The best XI of the German top flight — 12 teams, 6,825 records
- The best XI of the French top flight — 12 teams, 6,357 records
- The best XI of the Brazilian top flight — 14 teams, 7,495 records
- The best XI in international football — 44 teams, 27,641 records