The best XI of the Brazilian top flight
The highest-rated player available at every position in the Brazilian top flight, drawn from 7,495 real career records across 51 squads. Nobody voted. The record book chose.
| Pos | Player | From | Record | Legend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GK | Rogério Ceni | São Paulo 2000s | 575 apps | 94 |
| RB | Léo Moura | Flamengo 2010s | 312 apps · 27g | 92 |
| CB | Jonathan Moreira | Cruzeiro 2010s | 239 apps · 12g | 92 |
| CB | Marcos Antônio de Lima | Internacional 2000s | 350 apps · 32g | 92 |
| LB | Andrés D'Alessandro | Internacional 2010s | 181 apps · 45g | 92 |
| RM | Adílio | Flamengo 1980s | 615 apps · 128g | 93 |
| CM | Zico | Flamengo 1980s | 212 apps · 123g | 93 |
| CM | Giorgian de Arrascaeta | Flamengo 2010s | 236 apps · 73g | 92 |
| LM | Elano | Santos 2000s | 129 apps · 34g | 92 |
| ST | Edmundo | Palmeiras 1990s | 180 apps · 74g | 92 |
| ST | Kléber Pereira | Santos 2000s | 93 apps · 76g | 92 |
Fourteen clubs, floored at the 1980s, and the only league in the dataset whose strength rating is anchored to a European scale rather than measured on one. That anchor comes from the 79 Intercontinental Cup and Club World Cup matches ever played between the continents, and it carries a large error bar we publish rather than hide.
Brazilian squads turn over faster than European ones because their best players leave young, so the highest-rated careers here belong disproportionately to players who returned home late and stayed.
What the table is doing
This eleven draws on 6 different teams and spans the 1980s to the 2010s. 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 brazilian top flight chosen?
By record, not opinion. Every player in the Brazilian top flight 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 7,495 records across 51 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.