Lionel Messi retains his crown as the world’s best footballers in 2013

Lionel Messi has retained the top spot in this year’s Guardian’s choice of the world’s top 100 footballers, which also sees Franck Ribéry, Gareth Bale and Luis Suárez make impressive leaps into the top ten.

The second annual list by the Guardian enlisted the former Italy international Alessandro Nesta as the lead judge in a panel of 15 experts (up from 11 last year). The former England women’s coach, Hope Powell, and retired USA goalkeeper, Kasey Keller, joined the selection of Guardian journalists on the panel.

So how exactly did they go about ranking players for the top 100? Stephen McMillan explains:

We asked each judge one simple question: who have been the 40 best players in the world in 2013? They ranked their answers in order, from 1-40. We awarded 40 points for a No1 choice, 39pts for No2, and so on down to one point for their 40th choice.

The results, which have been unveiled in a countdown from December 20, are now published in full. You can see the top 100 listed in the table below with both this year’s ranking and that of 2012. The spreadsheet also includes details of the points awarded to each player on the list.

Ronaldo remains in second place while Zlatan Ibrahimovic has climbed two places to third. There have been some impressive leaps into the top ten; Ribéry up 24 places to fourth, Gareth Bale up 33 places to seventh and Suárez jumps from 21st place in 2012 to ninth in 2013.

Bayern Munich and Barcelona are the top represented clubs on the list with 11 players each, while Real Madrid have nine players in the top 100 – one fewer than last year. Chelsea and Borussia Dortmund have eight and seven respectively. Manchester City, who had eight players in last year’s list, now have six in the top 100.

Only four British players make this year’s selection; Gareth Bale in seventh, Wayne Rooney 28th, Aaron Ramsey 49th and Frank Lampard in 88th. As last year, Spanish, Brazilian and German players dominate the list.

Despite so few British players making the list, the Premier League remains the best represented league in the top 100 with 29 players (up from 27 in 2012) and is followed by La Liga with 26. The Bundesliga is the third most represented league with 18 players in the list.

At just 19, Paris Saint-Germain’s Marquinhos is the youngest player to be featured on the list beating Stephan El Shaarawy who made the top 100 last year aged 20.

The full breakdown by nationality, club, position and points scored can be found in the downloadable spreadsheet. We’ve also got numbers on the leagues that have been represented in the 2013 and 2012 list.

What do you think of the top 100? Who would you have voted for given the chance? We’d love to read your comments below.

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This article titled “The world’s best footballers in 2013: Lionel Messi retains his crown” was written by Ami Sedghi, for theguardian.com on Tuesday 24th December 2013 11.05 UTC