English newspaper The Guardian has made a ranking of the world’s top 100 footballers, with focus on their performances over the last months. Chelsea’s offensive midfielder Eden Hazard was awarded with a 58th place. Read more below on how we judge this result!

Eden Hazard ranked nr. 58 in Worlds 100 best football players.

They asked a 11-strong international panel of experts to name their top 30 players in action today and to rank them in order of preference. With these lists, the players scored points based on their ranking: a First position was rewarded by 30 points, the second 29 points, and so on down to last player on the list, who received only one point.

And we believe they did a good job: The top 10 shows the best players in a perfect order, with the unstoppable Ibrahimovic on place 5, Messi and Ronaldo as expected on place 1 and 2, and Barcelona’s Maestro’s Javi and Iniesta on 3 and 4.

Remarkable are the expected place 13 for Neymar, the return of Pirlo (place 8), and place 37 for Oscar, who jumped several places before Eden Hazard.

Best players per League

Why Eden Hazard is not top 20? The top 20 players all have decided at least 30 games on their own and many players from the top 50 have done this as well on international level (Drogba, Rooney, Tevez, Suarez, Neymar, Ribéry, Robben, …)

Of course football expert are unable to follow all football leagues all over the world, but football talents are often very fast transferred to one of those leagues. An exception is Neymar for example, who had multiple offers from Real Madrid and Barcelona, but decided to stay in Santos, where he is happy, and makes good extra money from advertising.
So what about Eden Hazard’s ranking? Fans might say that they expected him higher. Well, in the link below with interactive content, you can see Eden’s statistics are remarkable, and just as high as Juan Mata, currently the man with most assists in the Premier League. He also scores more than other world-class midfielders.

But Eden has recently made the jump to the Premier League, and after some very good games,  also average games followed. Also he hasn’t been able to make a big difference for Belgium’s national team. And that’s what is taken into consideration: Messi, Iniesta, Javi, Ronaldo and recently Ibrahimovic perform EVERY WEEK at the highest level, and demonstrate with brilliant play and brilliant goals why they play on a whole different level.

Eden has made the difference in the French League, but hasn’t decided 30 games on his own. The top 20 players all have done that before, and many players from the top 50 have done this as well on international level (Drogba, Rooney, Tevez, Suarez, Neymar, Ribéry, Robben, …)

So place 58 is a great success. We wish Eden Hazard a great holiday, and the same level of success in 2013!

Here is the full list:

• Top 100 best players according to The Guardian

Here is the interactive list: (with pictures and photo)

• Top 100 Best players in the world – Visually and with explanation

And if you want to see the top 100 on YouTube:

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