FC 100: Ronaldo ranked where?! Overrated, underrated & snubs

I know this is going to come as a massive surprise, but not everyone in the world agrees with the ESPN FC 100 rankings.

In fact, some people who vote in the rankings don’t agree with our FC 100 rankings. That’s how these things work: We all submit our ballots, and then the aggregate of our votes produces something that ends up being quite different from any of our individual ballots.

You know, including mine. So, today, I am going to take on the brave role of Angry Internet Commenter. I am going to put myself in your shoes and do my own analysis of the FC 100.

Who got ranked too high? Who was snubbed? Who is too low? Who doesn’t even belong on the list at all? And why the heck is Cristiano Ronaldo ranked the 15th-best forward in the world?

Let’s dig into it.

OVERRATED: Cristiano Ronaldo, forward

Club/country: Al Nassr/Portugal
FC 100 forward rank: 15

I almost fainted when I saw Ronaldo’s name on this list. And then I almost fainted again when I saw where Ronaldo’s name landed on this list, at No. 15 among all forwards.

Congrats to him on breaking the goals record in the Saudi Pro League. But guess what also happened in the Saudi league: Ronaldo’s team didn’t win the league. And guess what happened the year before that in the Saudi league: Ronaldo’s team didn’t win the league.

It’s the same story we’ve been telling for the past few seasons: Ronaldo is, incredibly, still capable of constantly getting into goal-scoring positions to score a ton of goals, but he doesn’t move when his team loses possession, he doesn’t provide much value elsewhere in buildup play, and he doesn’t have the pace to stretch opposition defenses and create space for his teammates.

On top of that, he’s still Cristiano Ronaldo, so his presence basically demands that he plays all the time. It all adds up to Ronaldo still scoring lots of goals but his teams not getting better — or, frequently, getting worse.

Did we all collectively memory-hole late 2022, when Ronaldo got benched by both Manchester United and Portugal? When Man United immediately shot up the table without Ronaldo and his replacement at the World Cup scored a hat trick?

Outside of maybe Sporting Lisbon, for sentimental reasons, I don’t think any other team would swap any of their players on this list in exchange for Ronaldo. That’s not backed by any reporting — it’s backed by the fact that he’s currently playing professional soccer in Saudi Arabia.

OVERRATED: João Palhinha, midfielder

Club/country: Fulham/Portugal
FC 100 midfielder rank: 23

Anytime you hear someone say that numbers or nerds are ruining the game, please just tune them out. While I do think there’s an argument to be made that one day, an analytically driven sport will be significantly worse to watch than what we see today — hope you like set pieces! — that day is far away. Very few teams are actually driven by data in any significant way, so data isn’t driving any of the perceived changes that these people don’t like.

However, if there’s one thing that makes me feel like an old man yelling at a cloud — “Watch the games, football isn’t played on a spreadsheet!!” — it’s the apparent obsession the soccer world has with Palhinha. The Fulham midfielder was within minutes of moving to Bayern Munich last summer, and I just don’t get it.

I mean, I guess I do get it. Last season, Palhinha ranked second among all players in Europe’s Big Five leagues in combined tackles+interceptions. And this past season, he ranked first. If you just stop there and don’t interrogate the idea any further, it all sounds pretty good. “If I want a ball-winning midfielder, obviously I want Joao Palhinha!”

But here are the names from the rest of the top 10 this past season: Morten Frendrup, Antonee Robinson, Frédéric Guilbert, Vinicius Souza, Bernardo, Emerson Palmieri, Laurent Abergel, João Gomes and Anton Stach. Winning lots of tackles and interceptions doesn’t actually say much at all about a player’s ability to actually impact winning, otherwise all of these players would be way more famous!

Outside of his ball-winning, per the site FBref, Palhinha ranks in the 45th percentile among all midfielders in pass-completion percentage, the 11th percentile for progressive passes, and the third percentile for progressive carries. This is all obvious when you watch him play: He frequently looks like he’s trying to handle a stick of dynamite with his feet.

Perhaps the basic statistics are easily understood by managers who want someone to win the ball, and if you watch tape with the specific purpose of finding someone to win the ball, you will see Palhinha doing that a lot. But the biggest clubs in the world need midfielders who add value on the ball and then clean up space after a press gets broken, not someone who’s chasing the ball all across the field.

I’m not sure Palhinha is a top-30 midfielder in the Premier League — let alone the whole world.

OVERRATED: John Stones, defender

Club/country: Manchester City/England
FC 100 defender rank: 6

I’m a little guilty here. At the time of voting last month, it seemed like Stones was still one of the most important — if not the most important — players on Manchester City. I had him in my top 10. His ability to seamlessly blend between centre-back and midfield was the elite version of what I expected we might get one day from Frenkie de Jong.

Stones’ two-position act seemingly allowed Man City to play more bigger guys and more defensive players than normal while not really sacrificing their ability to create chances on the other end. Stones looked like a fluid, world-class midfielder when he stepped into the midfield, and he didn’t look out of place in the backline in possession. The other City players who tried this — namely Manuel Akanji — looked like clunky defenders who were being asked to step into the midfield.

I figured Stones, who was working his way back from an injury suffered in March while on England duty, would eventually work his way back into the City lineup, but that never really happened. Across City’s final six Premier League matches — all of which were absolute must-wins — Stones stayed on the bench for five and only earned 22 total minutes of playing time, all in a 5-1 blowout win over Wolves.

Akanji still isn’t as convincing as Stones in the hybrid role, and in this new system, City are still at their best with a fully functioning Stones slipping up and down the field. But if he’s really the sixth-best defender in the world right now, he would’ve played more than 22 minutes during the most decisive stretch of Manchester City’s season.

OVERRATED: Jan Oblak, goalkeeper

Club/country: Atletico Madrid/Slovenia
FC 100 rank: 4

This is a pretty simple one. Not much of a sweeper or all that effective with the ball at his feet, Oblak provides most of his value as a shot-stopper, and he hasn’t been a great shot-stopper for a while now.

We can take the post-shot expected goal value of every attempt — the historical conversion probability of a shot based on the location and where it ended up on the goal frame — and compare it to the number of goals a goalkeeper actually allowed. That gives us a decent sense of how well he fared against the slate of shots he faced.

Here are Oblak’s numbers for the past seven seasons in LaLiga:

• 2017-18: 11.7 goals saved
• 2018-19: 14.3 goals saved
• 2019-20: 5.8 goals saved
• 2020-21: 11.1 goals saved
• 2021-22: minus-7.7 goals saved
• 2022-23: 1.9 goals saved
• 2023-24: minus-3.2 goals saved

Earlier in his career, Oblak truly was an all-time-great, lights-out shot-stopper. Ranked fourth in our list, he’s living off of his reputation rather than his recent performance.

UNDERRATED: Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, forward

Club/country: Napoli/Georgia
FC 100 forward rank: 20

Last season, Kvaratskhelia was our second-rated winger behind Bukayo Saka on the FC 100. This season, he’s behind Ronaldo and 19 other forwards.

What regressed in Kvaratskhelia’s game? Well, not a whole lot actually.

In his 2022-23 debut with Napoli, the Georgia international winger averaged 0.51 non-penalty expected goals+assists per 90 minutes. This past season, he’s bumped up to 0.58 npxG+xA per 90. In 2022-23, he averaged 2.7 successful take-ons per 90. This past season, he’s increased that rate to 3.3 take-ons per 90. And in 2022-23, he completed 5.0 progressive carries per 90 minutes. This past season, you guessed it, he’s been even better: 6.1 per 90.

All that changed is that Napoli were a complete mess behind the scenes, they didn’t win anything, and not as many shots went in. Last year, he converted 6.6 non-penalty xG into 10 non-penalty goals, while this year he’s flipped 11.1 xG into 11 goals. Same goes for the chances he’s creating: 10 assists from 7.7 expected last season, and six assists from 6.8 expected this season.

The larger the circle, the higher the xG value of the attempt:

What you’ll notice there is that his creation levels have remained mostly the same, while he’s becoming a way more dangerous shot-taker. Given how volatile finishing is from season to season, I feel pretty confident in saying that Kvaratskhelia has actually improved from last season. Plus, the guy is still only 23, and he could keep improving.

If I were running a team with a lot of money, he’d be my No. 1 transfer target this summer.

UNDERRATED: Federico Valverde, midfielder

Club/country: Real Madrid/Uruguay
FC 100 midfielder rank: 26

Unsurprisingly, team success plays a big role in where a player ranks from season to season. If a team has a great year, he’s going to be on television or in the news more often, and we’re all likely to rank him higher. In other words, players on the best teams are more likely to be overrated and vice versa.

That’s why I’m baffled by Valverde’s position in these rankings. It’s one thing that he’s 26th, but he’s also behind fellow Real Madrid midfielders Eduardo Camavinga and Aurélien Tchouaméni, two guys he consistently starts ahead of at arguably the best club team in the world.

Valverde led Real Madrid in minutes this season! How is he only the 26th-best midfielder in the world, people?

It’s not just the minutes, either. He’s developed into a truly fantastic, all-around player. Everyone knows his defensive bona fides by now, but he’s also become a solid passer, great ball carrier, and awesome off-ball runner.

Plus, there’s an added value to Valverde’s versatility. His ability to function in a number of different roles gives Madrid more depth than there immediately appears, and it provides them with lots of team-building flexibility. Sign anyone you want, and Valverde will find a way to impact the game from where he’s needed.

In my mind, he’s closer to first than 30th.

UNDERRATED: Gianluigi Donnarumma, goalkeeper

Club/country: Paris Saint-Germain/Italy
FC 100 rank: 10

Over the past two seasons, only one goalkeeper across Europe’s Big Five has saved more than 14 goals — purple dots are saves and orange are goals:

Donnarumma is one of the most famous goalkeepers in the world, he’s coming off the best season of his career — and somehow he barely made the list. I’m at a loss here. He’s behind Lukas Hradecky?

Like Oblak, Donnarumma’s impact on the game is limited to stopping shots and not much else. Unlike Oblak, Donnarumma has been better at stopping shots than anyone else in the world over the past two seasons.

He should be closer to first than 10th. Justice for the fourth-highest-paid goalkeeper in the world.

BIGGEST SNUB: Giovanni Di Lorenzo, defender

Club/country: Napoli/Italy
FC 100 defender rank: Not ranked

Here sits our biggest snub. I had Di Lorenzo ranked fourth among all defenders — and he didn’t even make the list!

We’ll start here: There are essentially two phases of in-possession soccer — moving the ball up field and then turning the possession into a shot. The best publicly available metric we have for ball progression is FBref’s progressive passes. They define it as such: “Completed passes that move the ball towards the opponent’s goal line at least 10 yards from its furthest point in the last six passes, or any completed pass into the penalty area. Excludes passes from the defending 40% of the pitch.”

Over the past two seasons, there are only four players across Europe’s Big Five who have completed more progressive passes than Di Lorenzo, who completed 560: Manchester City’s Rodri, Arsenal’s Martin Ødegaard, Real Madrid’s Toni Kroos and Bayer Leverkusen’s Granit Xhaka. Then there’s Manchester United’s Bruno Fernandes, who is somehow tied with Di Lorenzo on exactly 560. Put another way, those are our first-, third-, fourth-, ninth- and 24th-ranked midfielders on the FC 100. Put another way: Di Lorenzo has completed 100 more progressive passes than any other defender across the Big Five leagues in 2023-24.