Argentine football superstar Lionel Messi isn’t used to standing on podiums’ third step. He is, after all, the most winning player in football history, with 45 titles. And while the Rosario native has had his fair share of disappointments, particularly in his early days with the national team, we imagine he won’t take too kindly to ESPN ranking the World Cup and eight-time Ballon d’Or winner the third greatest athlete of the 21st century.
The sports media outlet went out on the near-impossible mission of analyzing the career of every single great athlete across every discipline and ranking them in accordance with their success in the last 24 years.
The impossibility of comparing Champions League titles to NBA MVPs and Olympic gold medals must’ve weighed in, as Messi, arguably the greatest ever exponent of the world’s most popular and most played sport, was ranked third.
“Messi winning the World Cup in Argentina in 2022 was perhaps the biggest Hollywood ending that soccer has ever seen,” claims the article, adding that while the Argentine star’s biggest triumph looked impossible after his loss at Brazil 2014, winning at Qatar 2022 was the crowning achievement of his career.
The Argentine sits in the third spot, below two U.S. representatives, record Olympic medal-winning swimmer Michael Phelps (he collected 28 in total), and Serena Williams, arguably the greatest female tennis player ever.
Messi is one of only three non-U.S. athletes in the list’s top ten, the other two being Swiss tennis legend Roger Federer and Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt. Both are often regarded as the greatest in their disciplines and rank 6th and 9th respectively.
Basketball players LeBron James at 4th and Kobe Bryant at 10th, American football player Tom Brady at 5th, gymnast Simone Biles at 7th, and golfer Tiger Woods at 8th complete the top ten.
Notable top ten omissions include all-time record tennis Grand Slam winner Novak Djokovic (11th), seven-time Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton (19th) and five-time FIFA Women’s World Player of the Year Marta Vieira da Silva (32nd).