Unlike every major American sport, we rarely talk about who the best soccer player is.
And, well, it's been a long time since we've even had to. The answer was almost always Lionel Messi. Heck, it still might be Lionel Messi, too. And in the brief moments when it wasn't Messi, the answer was always Cristiano Ronaldo.
Of course, they both left the top level of the game a number of years ago. But rather than zeroing in on who has filled the resulting vacuum, we've asked a slightly different question: Who should win the Ballon d'Or?
And that's not quite the same thing. As the award's own website states: "The Ballon d'Or™ is awarded based on three essential pillars: individual performance, team achievements, and class combined with fair play."
We'll ignore the last part -- what is "class combined with fair play" even supposed to mean? -- but this criteria means that the award goes to the best individual player who has won the most team trophies. You could score 40 Premier League goals for a team that would've otherwise been relegated -- you'd stand no chance of winning the Ballon d'Or because your team isn't, say, owned by a sovereign-wealth fund.
But if we take a step back and think about who the best player in the world really is, the answer seems less clear than it has been in a long time. Your answer, in a sense, doubles as your own little philosophical statement about the sport:
How much do you value goals? How important is domestic play versus the Champions League? Is per-minute performance more important than sum-total contributions? What about work rate? Off-ball movement? League quality? Does the international game matter to you? Could a goalkeeper be the best player in the world? Perhaps you even understand what "class combined with fair play" actually means?
While the worst versions of these conversations devolve into people yelling at each other on the radio and someone eventually saying something like, "Lewis Dunk would have at least one Ballon d'Or if he played for Bayern Munich," I believe we can talk about these things in a way that not only raises up all of the players involved but provides some insight as to how the game works today.
So, throughout this season, I'm going to constantly update who I think the 10 best players in the world are. This is the first edition of ESPN's 10 Best List, a global look at the top players right now.
What does 'best' even mean?
In baseball, they have wins above replacement -- a catch-all metric that evaluates everything players do and converts it into the currency of wins. In American football, it's impossible for someone other than the quarterback to actually be the best player in the sport. And in basketball, there are so few players and so many substitutions that it's way easier to connect player performance directly to winning.