The best XI of the 2000s
The highest-rated player available at every position in the 2000s, drawn from 20,728 real career records across 130 squads. Nobody voted. The record book chose.
| Pos | Player | From | Record | Legend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GK | David Seaman | Arsenal 2000s | 405 apps | 94 |
| RB | Cafu | Brazil 2000s | 142 apps · 5g | 95 |
| CB | Tony Adams | Arsenal 2000s | 504 apps · 32g | 94 |
| CB | Lee Dixon | Arsenal 2000s | 458 apps · 25g | 94 |
| LB | Nigel Winterburn | Arsenal 2000s | 440 apps · 8g | 94 |
| RM | Robert Pires | Arsenal 2000s | 284 apps · 84g | 94 |
| CM | Theo Walcott | Arsenal 2000s | 270 apps · 65g | 94 |
| CM | Dirk Kuyt | Netherlands 2000s | 104 apps · 24g | 94 |
| LM | Paul Scholes | Manchester United 2000s | 466 apps · 102g | 94 |
| ST | Thierry Henry | Arsenal 2000s | 377 apps · 228g | 94 |
| ST | Robin van Persie | Netherlands 2000s | 102 apps · 50g | 94 |
The decade the money moved. Premier League and La Liga records dominate, and the highest-rated club careers are increasingly players who stayed a decade at one club rather than moving every three years.
Assists start being recorded with some consistency in this period, which slightly favours midfielders here over their equivalents in earlier decades — a data artefact worth knowing about rather than a claim that the midfielders got better.
What the table is doing
This eleven draws on 4 different teams. Each player is ranked against others in the same position, decade and team type, so a goalkeeper’s appearance record and a striker’s goal record can sit in the same list without one drowning the other. The full derivation, including where it is least certain, is in the methodology.
Public records contain errors, so this list can too. Every name above links to its squad page, and every squad page links to the Wikidata record behind the figures — if something here is wrong, it can be checked in two clicks, and corrections are welcome.
Common questions
How is this the best xi of the 2000s chosen?
By record, not opinion. Every player in the 2000s is ranked on their real career output — appearances, goals, assists and honours — and the highest-rated available player fills each position in a 4-4-2. The pool here is 20,728 records across 130 squads.
Can I check these numbers?
Yes, and that is the point. Each player links to the squad page they came from, and every squad page links each name to the Wikidata record the figures were extracted from.
Can I play with this XI?
Not this exact eleven — the game deals you a random team and decade each turn and you draft from what you are given. That constraint is the game. These pages show what the strongest possible eleven would look like if you were never constrained at all.