A new study states: Cristiano Ronaldo is the best footballer of all time Israel today

In the days when computerized systems are taking over every area of ​​life, and computers are good at calculating and diagnosing every phenomenon better than humans, it was only a matter of time until the model that would scientifically and data-based answer the eternal question: Who is the best soccer player of all time?

Of course, each of us has our own answer, but does it match the mathematical solution?

The scientific answer - and especially the way to reach it - was offered by Dr. Tom Crawford, a mathematics lecturer from the University of Oxford and an avid football fan. So that the selection of the best player does not rely on subjective preferences, such as the player's generational affiliation, country or appearance, Crawford decided to formulate a model Weed out all the irrelevant data, minus what is not important, it remains to weigh the important parameters.

The Golden Ball as a touchstone

The first of them: the selection of candidates.

Crawford pointed to the "Golden Ball" as a tool for initial screening, and proposed to keep in the competition only those footballers who won the most prestigious football award of all at least twice.

In the next step, seven parameters of achievements were introduced into the game: number of titles in clubs, number of titles in national teams, number of goals in clubs, number of goals in national teams, number of "Golden Ball" wins, number of records and number of seasons in which the candidate was the X Factor.

Don't take this data for granted.

You don't have to be a mathematician to understand that a championship title in a small or medium league is not the same in importance as a corresponding title in a senior league.

Crawford found a way to weight this by using a system borrowed from UEFA's ranking system. For each championship title, the candidate received the score of the relevant league during the winning period, and for each domestic cup title - half of it.

Ronaldo.

Five Golden Balls puts him at the top of the list, photo: AP

To estimate the difficulty of winning a European title in a certain season, the mathematician added the scores of the two top leagues in that year.

In the case of winning more than one country, the score was multiplied by 1.5 times (or 2.25 times, if he did it in three countries), in order to reflect the versatility of the player and his ability to adapt to changing conditions.

When scoring the national team titles, Crawford took into account the nature of the title (maximum 150 points for the World Cup and 100 points for the Euro or the Copa America) and the team's likelihood of winning it, which was based on its ranking.

If the player had a decisive role in winning - for example, the World Cup goalscoring record - the score was tripled.

The numbers of goals were also converted into points using auxiliary data: the numbers of goals in the club were multiplied by the average of goals per game, while the numbers of goals in the national teams were simply counted.

To reflect the dominance of a footballer in a given year, the score for each Ballon d'Or is calculated by dividing the number of votes received by the winner by the total number of votes given to the top three candidates in that year.

Intrigued about the last parameter - the X Factor seasons?

Of course, this refers to the seasons in which the footballer recorded an extraordinary achievement.

Crawford translated this into a score by calculating the statistical probability of the achievement.

We will not bore you with the entire chain of calculations.

In the general weighting, the ranking crowns Cristiano Ronaldo the best footballer of all time, by a small but clear margin from Leo Messi.

Pele was placed third, while the other legends (Franz Puskas, the Brazilian Ronaldo, Marco Van Basten, Alfredo Di Stefano, Michel Platini, Diego Maradona and Johan Cruyff) were far behind.

Leo Messi.

"Only" Shani, photo: Getty Images

Maradona.

Left behind, photo: AP

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