World Cup 2026 is here, and you want to play some soccer games with the best players ever. So do we, actually. Thing is, the best players in football game history are actually wildly OP. So much so that they kinda break the very fabric of the sport.
Have you read about the strong link theory? It’s the idea that in some team sports, outcomes are determined by the mistakes of the weakest players on their team, and in others it’s the strongest links who take over and decide the outcome. Football is generally thought of as a weak link sport. All we can say is, whichever academics decided that theory have obviously never had Tijani Babangida in their PES Master League squad.
Journey with us through the greatest game-breakers in virtual football past and present, from cult heroes to bona fide legends of the real sport, several of whom are in attendance at World Cup 2026.
Ibrahima Bakayoko – Championship Manager 97/98
Nineties football. A golden pre-internet age, in which we permitted players to keep a bit of mystique and we were thus allowed to idolise them from a distance in relative ignorance. A decade or two later, social media would show us their day-to-day lives and reveal them as people who pose with their family in identical minimalist mansions and sell us gambling offers, but not in 1997. Not when Champ Man 97/98 released.
The other edge to that sword, however, was that this age of innocence extended to teams’ own scouting networks, and even the wise sages who build Champ Man databases. Case in point: Ibrahima Bakayoko, a perfectly adequate Ivorian forward whom this game seemed to think was every bit the equal of Figo, Zidane, Beckham or Ronaldo Nazario.
This was wrong. Incorrect. But we simply didn’t know better when the game was released. How could anyone? Sure, the pages of World Soccer magazine weren’t quite as jam-packed with Ibrahima Bakayoko posters as you’d expect if you looked at his conversion rate in CM 97/98, but that made him all the cooler. A genuine piece of undiscovered Ivorian gold.
It was perhaps this logic that prompted Everton to sign him for the 1998-99 season in real life, where Bakayoko netted a monstrous four goals in 23 scintillating appearances.
See also: John Curtis, Erik Nevland, Denilson, Richard Wright… Yeah, that database is wild.
Tijani Babangida – Pro Evolution Soccer
By the time you’ve read this entry, Tijani Babangida has sprinted up the pitch, scored three times, showered, gone home, started a fashion brand side hustle and retired to the Saudi league. The man was rapid.
A hero of the first three PES/Winning Eleven titles, Babangida’s pace stat was so OP that he was all but mandatory in your Master League squad, a cheat player for the ages.
In real life the Nigerian winger Babangida was absolutely fine. He spent seven seasons at Ajax, going out on loan for three of them, and managed a very respectable 22 goals in 77 appearances. In PES, however, he’s the player Lionel Messi wishes he could have become.
The problem was that these were the days before developers recognized that pace was the only important stat in football games. They had yet to balance gameplay to counter that issue. So although Konami didn’t intend him to be the best player in the game, his 99 top speed and 96 acceleration meant that functionally, he absolutely was. Thanks for all the route one goals, Tijani.
Maxim Tsigalko – Championship Manager 01/02
Yep, we’re back with Champ Man again. The easy information exchange and vast scouting networks feeding its modern descendent Football Manager mean there are little to no ‘glitch’ players anymore, but at the time of Champ Man 01/02’s release they were still rife.
If you played it, you’ll no doubt have a list of your own preferred personnel, and that list will feature Mike Duff and Kim Källström. But the undisputed king of football in this game is Belarussian striker Maxim Tsigalko (a misspelling of the player’s actual name, Maksim Tsyhalka). At any club, in any league, he would score you 50 goals a season with a regularity you’d bet your house on, and his story is well worth telling.
In 2013 Antonio Poutillo, the scout responsible for gathering the game’s Belarussian data, gave an interview explaining why he backed Tsyhalka, stating he believed Belarussian football had a future at the time, and pointing out Tsyhalkha’s prodigious youth team performances.
In reality, injury hampered the player’s career and he would never reach the heights of global superstardom that his in-game representation did. He made his last professional appearance in 2008, and worked in construction afterwards but was limited by the same knee injury that ended his career. Tragically, Tyshalka passed away in 2020 at 37 years old.
Champ Man 01/02 has become a kind of interactive memorial to the player, who probably had little to no idea how adored he was by gamers across the world. It’s a tribute to him, and to the many players like him who had the potential for greatness, but whose careers were stopped short by injury or other issues. Rest in peace, Maksim.
Obafemi Martins – Pro Evolution Soccer 5
From the sublime to Obafemi Martins, whom Konami must have watched a really impressive 360p highlight video of before beginning development on PES 5.
Or maybe they simply had that video playing at the wrong speed, because the Nigerian striker could dribble at a pace that’d get him a driving ban in a residential area. He was the ultimate counter-attack tactic during PES’s PS2 heyday, reducing matches to a simple matter of: does Obafemi Martins have the ball? If no: give Obafemi Martins the ball. If yes: dribble directly at goal at about 35mph, shoot, score, repeat.
Like many players on this list, the real-life version simply couldn’t match up to his superhuman in-game counterpart. While he was impressive enough as a youngster at Inter, his game time was limited by extreme striker congestion at the Giuseppe Meazza. Above him in the pecking order were Vieri, Recoba, and, on the odd occasion that their knees worked, Ronaldo and Adriano.
Perhaps he forgot to pack his phenomenal speed when he made his way to St James’ Park following a transfer to Newcastle in 2006. Perhaps it was never there in the first place. Regardless, Martins’ PES version is a ‘streets don’t forget’ striker for all time.
Adriano – Pro Evolution Soccer 6
Hang on, did someone say ‘wildly OP Inter striker from PES’s glory days’? Well we’ve gone and summoned Adriano now, and he looks angry.
Actually, peak Adriano always looked angry. In PES 6 he was such a totem of absolute power that you only had to breathe on the shoot button and he’d blast in an absolute missile from 35 yards. His shot power and accuracy, particularly on his favoured left foot, were as OP as we’ve ever seen in a player in football game history.
Unlike Martins, this wasn’t wildly uncharacteristic of the real player at the time. The real Adriano’s hulking physique looked as though it could just barely be contained under the Nerazzurri colors, and he played with a physicality and speed that had the football press framing him as heir apparent to Inter team-mate Ronaldo Nazario.
Unfortunately, Adriano shared another trait with R9: a lower body made of cheddar cheese. Injuries plagued his career, and sadly after his father passed away in 2004 Adriano reportedly fell victim to alcohol abuse issues which coincided with a decline in his on-pitch performances. We wish him all the best in his post-football life.
Victor Ibarbo – FIFA 14
FIFA 14 was arguably the best EA Sports’ franchise has ever been, and although that era of world football was characterised by peak Messi vs Ronaldo rivalry in La Liga, of all people it’s Victor Ibarbo whose legend is etched into FIFA 14.
With the greatest respect to the real Colombian winger, his in-game depiction is something of an accounting error. As a squad player at Cagliari, his reputation in world football was not that of one of the sport’s titans. However, his unusual combination of 90 pace, four-star dribbling moves and a 6’2” stature made him an incredibly effective wing option, and a cheap acquisition back in the days when FUT wasn’t about picking between 90+ rated players after playing three matches.
Like Babangida before him, FIFA 14’s Ibarbo is far more than the sum of his parts, and uses his unique attributes to run off and break the game with scant consideration for his developer’s wishes.
Cristiano Ronaldo (TOTS) – FIFA 16
Like his fellow football-savant and eternal rival Leo Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo has been around longer than rudimentary toolmaking and primitive settlements. During that time he’s been basically mandatory in every FUT collection and his in-form FIFA cards have always maxed out the OVR rankings. So you can go ahead and pick a FIFA of personal preference here, but for our money it’s his FIFA 16 TOTS FUT card.
With 99 pace, 99 dribbling and 99 shooting, CR7 leaves you wanting almost nothing more from him, other than that he’d put slightly less gel in his hair. Unlike NBA 2K and its unique player animations, the FIFA series never truly captured the specifics of what makes Ronaldo Ronaldo and Messi (encara) Messi. But at least we always had a dominant, speedy goal machine from our TOTS Ronaldo cards.
Lionel Messi – eFootball 2021
I mean, he’s Lionel Messi. Every version of him that’s turned up in a video game since 2008 has been trouble, because Lionel Messi is trouble. He’s got the center of gravity of a sheet of paper, a foot like a traction engine and an unwavering eye for goal. He is, and always has been, unplayable.
That said, his depiction in eFootball’s utterly baffling 2021 free-to-play capitulation is probably the most dominant the Argentine’s been in polygonal form. Konami’s overhauled dribbling and ball physics systems placed a lot of emphasis on dribbling stats and user-inputted ball control, meaning the game became Messi’s playground. The game’s evolved since launch nearly five years ago, although perhaps not as much as one would expect, and the meta has broadened a little since then, but he’s still at the top of the tier list.
Erling Haaland – Football Manager 2024
It’s not that Sports Interactive got this one particularly wrong. Modern Football Manager isn’t unbalanced and its vast array of spreadsheets under the hood aren’t inaccurate. No, it’s that Erling Haaland himself is OP. Some say his father and Leeds United legend Alf-Inge Haaland grew Erling in a lab to spite Roy Keane, building a kind of footballing Ivan Drago and eventually deploying him at Man City as the ultimate revenge for that career-ending tackle the United player put in on him [citation needed]. Whatever his origin story, Haaland’s just a bit too good and needs to be patched.
He scores at a rate that’s frankly boring, both in real life and in FM 24, the release in which he’s particularly unstoppable. You could sign him, but that’d be like rosebudding your way to wealth in The Sims and will only lead to a feeling of emptiness. No, it’s better to construct a band of plucky wonderkids who’ll one day overthrow him. Just ask Mikel Arteta.
Kylian Mbappé (TOTS) – EA Sports FC 26
EA Sports FC attempts to inject a bit more personality into players than its forebear FIFA did, by introducing Playstyles. It’s primitive in comparison to NBA 2K, which would ruffle FC’s hair and tell it to keep trying kiddo, but it does affect the meta significantly, and one player card typifies that phenomenon more than any other in EA Sports FC 26: Kylian Mbappé.
Of particular use are Mbappé’s Finesse Shot Plus, Game Changer Plus and Quick Step Plus traits, which mean he can not only perform lithe changes of direction and bursts of speed better than nearly any other player, but then go onto absolutely welly the ball once he uses those twists and turns to get an eye on goal.
He’s also got fantastic attacking AI, so when you’re building up in the midfield you can just keep an eye on him and wait for an incisive run from him. It would be a huge advantage… except every other FC 26 player on Earth seems to have TOTS Mbappé too, so…
Phil Iwaniuk is a veteran hardware smasher and game botherer who has written for the likes of PC Format, Official PlayStation Magazine, PCGamesN, The Guardian, Eurogamer, Rock, Paper, Shotgun, and IGN. He won an award once, but he doesn’t like to go on about it.
