These players left legacies, redefined the game with trademark skills, and grew into national icons. They have their stats—the goals, the wins, the trophies—but, more importantly, they have their stories.

One World Cup winner owned a nightclub that briefly transformed a corner of industrial Germany into one of the hippest places around. An Austrian forward’s death is still shrouded in mystery. A striker who might have become a telephone technician had he not been spotted playing soccer was eventually elected president of his country.

And there are unanswered questions. How did Pelé’s Brazil shirt from the 1958 World Cup quarterfinal go missing in a Welsh school? Which goalkeeper was so good that one opponent considered scoring against him akin to “winning a trophy”?

Through extensive research and interviews, The Athletic soccer staff, led by Oliver Kay and James Horncastle, discovered angles and tales that shine a new light on the sport’s most compelling characters.

They faced an impossible riddle, too: Of the thousands of players to hit the pitch, who is the best? Their efforts to find the answer took the foremost sports newsroom on a journey, and what emerges is more than a ranking. Through all-new, vivid portraits of each athlete, The Soccer 100 is a tribute to the greatest players to have ever graced the most popular sport on the planet.