The 10 greatest players who never played at the World Cup: Best, Cantona… | OneFootball

The World Cup is the pinnacle of football – a tournament that has given all-time legends including Pele, Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi their greatest, legacy-defining moments.

Unfortunately, some of the greats of the games have never graced the grandest stage of them all. Some iconic players who enjoyed wonderful careers representing clubs including Real Madrid, Manchester United, AC Milan and Liverpool never got a chance to represent their nations in FIFA’s historic, flagship tournament.

Certain players always had the odds stacked against them, given their nationalities. Others were simply victims of circumstance. Here are the 10 greatest players who never made it to a World Cup.

10. Abedi Pele

Jordan and Andre Ayew have enjoyed respectable enough careers in the game, and they were both fortunate enough to play for Ghana at the World Cup.

Andre was a part of the Black Stars squad cruelly denied a place in the semi-finals by Luis Suarez’s handball in 2010. He returned twice more, in 2014 and 2022, both times by younger brother Jordan.

Decent enough players on their day, but truthfully speaking neither could hold a candle to their father, the great Abedi Pele, one of the greatest African footballers of all time.

He was named African Footballer of the Year three years running by France Football during his Marseille heyday, a stint that brought two Ligue 1 titles and the Champions League. He also won AFCON with Ghana in 1982 and finished as a runner-up 10 years later.

But Ghana didn’t make it to a World Cup until 2006, long after Abedi Pele retired.

9. Johnny Giles

Proud Irishman Giles made hundreds of appearances alongside Big Jack Charlton, a famous son of Northumberland, during Leeds United’s glory years under Don Revie in the 1960s and 1970s.

He earned 59 caps for his country and served for seven years as their player-manager, but he left the post and turned his hand to club management – Shamrock Rovers, Vancouver Whitecaps, briefly West Brom – before his old pal changed everything, revolutionised how Ireland played, and led them to their first ever World Cup in 1990.

A new generation of Irish football fans will know Giles as a wonderfully incisive and infamously cutting pundit on RTE, but those old enough to have watched Revie’s Leeds will recognise him as one of the best, most formidable midfielders of his era.

8. Gunnar Nordahl

The player with the most Cappocanniere awards (top scorer in Serie A) was Swedish. No, not Zlatan. Nordahl won it five times in six years in the early 1950s and his record has remained unsurpassed in the 70 years since.

Michel Platini, Andriy Shevchenko, Francesco Totti, Ciro Immobile – none of them can match Sweden’s greatest-ever player, AC Milan’s all-time top goalscorer and a winner of two Scudetti.

And Sweden’s finest hour was reaching the final four of the World Cup. They topped a group featuring Italy and Paraguay, and later beat Spain. They pushed eventual champions Uruguay hard, leading before losing 3-2 to a late goal. (Let’s ignore the 6-1 defeat to the host nation Brazil).

You might assume that Nordahl, somewhere near his peak and fresh from topping the Serie A scoring charts for the first time, would have played a key role in that run. Nope, you’d be wrong.

Nordahl boasted an outrageous goalscoring return of 43 goals in 33 appearances for the national team, but he didn’t go to Brazil because the Swedish FA didn’t allow professionals to play for the national team.

Every chance they’d have one World Cup by now had that ridiculous rule not been in place.

7. Bernd Schuster

One of the stars of West Germany’s 1980 Euros-winning team, Schuster retired from international football at the age of just 24 and never made it to a World Cup.

“I grew annoyed with the German federation for not acknowledging all of the efforts I was making just to play for my country,” Schuster – who won tons of silverware with Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid in his club career – later reflected in an interview with FourFourTwo.

“Yeah, of course [I regret it]. I was still young, reckless and impulsive. That generation went on to win the 1990 World Cup and I could’ve been there.

“I didn’t have anyone by my side to offer good advice. No players in Germany had an agent then – only Beckenbauer, no one else.”

6. George Weah

The first of three Ballon d’Or winners to feature in this list, Weah served for six years as the 25th president of Liberia but he couldn’t quite inspire them to the World Cup finals.

Their moment was 2002. With the veteran forward giving it one last go, Liberia agonisingly missed out on making it to Japan and South Korea after finishing just one point behind Nigeria in their CAF qualification group.

Weah retired in 2003, swiftly turned his attention to politics, and Liberia haven’t come close to making one since.

5. Ian Rush

Liverpool’s all-time top goalscorer. A winner of five English league titles, two European Cups, three FA Cups and five League Cups.

Unfortunately, the moustachioed striker’s 1980s pomp coincided with a relatively fallow period for the Welsh national team and a particularly competitive European qualifying campaign. He didn’t even play in the European Championships.

Rush scored a respectable 28 goals in 73 international appearances for a largely ailing team, but his legacy was shaped far more by the red of Liverpool than the red of Wales.

4. Laszlo Kubala

One of the great products of Hungarian football, in another life the Budapest-born striker might’ve featured alongside Ferenc Puskas for the iconic ‘Mighty Magyars’ side that suffered a 3-2 defeat to West Germany in the 1954 World Cup final, otherwise known as the Miracle of Bern.

Kubala’s path went differently. He fled Soviet-occupied Hungary as a political refugee to evade mandatory military conscription.

He’d made a handful of appearances for both Czechoslovakia and Hungary, but ended up serving a ban imposed by FIFA.

It was during this time that Kubala rebuilt his life and career in Barcelona, inspiring them to four La Liga titles and becoming one of the greatest and most influential players in the Catalan club’s history.

After serving a one-year international ban, with FIFA less strict on switching allegiances, he went on to represent Spain.

Kubala scored 11 goals in 19 appearances for La Roja between 1953 and 1961. He was included in their squad for the 1962 World Cup, but was forced to withdraw due to injury.

3. Eric Cantona

King Eric scored 20 goals in 45 international appearances, but his pomp coincided with a fallow period for Les Bleus in the post-Platini era.

France failed to qualify for both Italia ’90 and USA ’94 before lifting the trophy on home soil in 1998.

Always one to do things on his own terms, Cantona shocked the world when he announced his decision to hang up his boots at the age of 30, having just won a fifth league title in six years in England.

He’d served as France’s captain under Aime Jacquet, but he fell out of favour and missed Euro 96 following his long suspension after that kung-fu kick on a Crystal Palace supporter.

“No, I don’t think so,” Cantona responded when asked if he’d have retired so young had he been a part of Jacquet’s plans for France’s 1998 World Cup.

“I lost my love for football, that’s all,” he said. “I said in interviews when I was 20 that I would quit the day that I was no longer passionate about it.

“When I lost my passion for the game, I stopped. I stopped and I moved on to other things. I know that football is something very strong. It’s a drug.

“So I decided not to watch any more games — a bit like a drug addict who absolutely has to get away from his dealer.

“So I kicked the habit and I had other passions. I started working in cinema. I started making films and I’ve done films regularly since then.”

Classic Cantona. One of the greats.

2. George Best

Northern Ireland have made it to a couple of World Cups. Unfortunately for them, neither coincided with the peak years of their greatest-ever footballer.

The Green and White Army qualified for their first World Cup in 1958, when Best would’ve been watching on as a 12-year-old boy in Belfast.

By the time they made their second and third tournaments in the 1980s, he was winding down his career at an eclectic array of clubs including Sea Bee, Hong Kong Rangers, Brisbane Lions and Tobermore United – long after his days as a regular international.

Best participated in three qualifying campaigns, but they just missed out in the days of the tournament being restricted to just 16 teams. Even making it back then, in the 60s and 70s, was a real achievement in itself.

He’s widely cited as the greatest ever player never to light up a World Cup. But we’d have him (just about) behind…

1. Alfredo Di Stefano

Another remarkable tale of football in the post-war era, Argentinian phenomenon Stefano arrived at Real Madrid – following a protracted contract battle with Barcelona – in 1953.

His signing was ultimately responsible for turning Los Blancos into the superclub we recognise it as today, their towering figure as they won the first five European Cups and eight La Liga titles in the 1950s and early 1960s.

A bit like Kubala, his international journey was a convoluted one. He scored six times in six games for his birth nation in 1947, before briefly switching to Colombia – where he played his club football for Millonarios – and eventually adopting Spain after the move to Madrid.

Alongside Kubala, in his veteran years he helped Spain qualify for the 1962 World Cup in Chile. A muscular injury sidelined him for the tournament, but he travelled regardless and was with the squad in a non-playing role.