The best XI of the German top flight
The highest-rated player available at every position in the German top flight, drawn from 6,825 real career records across 75 squads. Nobody voted. The record book chose.
| Pos | Player | From | Record | Legend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GK | Manuel Neuer | Bayern Munich 2010s | 386 apps | 94 |
| RB | Philipp Lahm | Bayern Munich 2010s | 332 apps · 12g | 94 |
| CB | Jérôme Boateng | Bayern Munich 2010s | 229 apps · 5g | 94 |
| CB | Georg Schwarzenbeck | Bayern Munich 1980s | 416 apps · 21g | 93 |
| LB | Martín Demichelis | Bayern Munich 2010s | 174 apps · 13g | 93 |
| RM | Franck Ribéry | Bayern Munich 2010s | 273 apps · 86g | 95 |
| CM | Arjen Robben | Bayern Munich 2010s | 201 apps · 99g | 94 |
| CM | Bastian Schweinsteiger | Bayern Munich 2010s | 342 apps · 45g | 94 |
| LM | Thomas Müller | Bayern Munich 2010s | 503 apps · 150g | 94 |
| ST | Robert Lewandowski | Bayern Munich 2010s | 253 apps · 238g | 95 |
| ST | Mario Gómez | Bayern Munich 2010s | 115 apps · 75g | 94 |
Twelve clubs, and one of them dominates. Bayern Munich supply most of the top records in the dataset for this league, which reflects both genuine sustained success and the fact that they retain players longer than their domestic rivals.
Borussia Dortmund, Borussia Mönchengladbach and Hamburg all contribute records strong enough to reach an XI in other competitions; here they mostly sit behind a Bayern squad that kept the same spine for a decade.
What the table is doing
This eleven draws on 1 different team and spans the 1960s to the 2020s. 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 german top flight chosen?
By record, not opinion. Every player in the German 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 6,825 records across 75 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.