Ranking the 10 best attacking midfielders in world football: Bellingham, Fernandes, Cherki… | OneFootball

Who are the best attacking midfielders in world football right now? It’s a stacked field, with creative stars from Real Madrid, Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea amongst the best in Europe at this moment.

Before we begin, a quick clarification. This list is exclusively for No.10s, playmakers and attack-minded midfielders. Deeper operators, holding midfielders and box-to-box No.8s aren’t included here, even if some regularly chip in with goals and assists.

With that out of the way, here’s our ranking of the 10 best attacking midfielders in world football.

10. Fermin Lopez

It felt ridiculously harsh excluding Jamal Musiala, who we’d have had in the top three a year or so ago, but the painful truth is he simply hasn’t looked the same player since returning from the broken leg he suffered at the Club World Cup.

He’s still not bad, by any means, and with a few weeks’ rest, proper pre-season and time to get up to speed we’re backing the 23-year-old Bayern star to get back to his best and challenging the top end here.

Likewise, if the likes of Arda Guler, £117million Morgan Rogers, Eberechi Eze and Phil Foden can put a run of form together we’ll certainly consider them. There’s yer honourable mentions.

Sneaking into our top 10 is a player who missed the World Cup through injury, which is a massive shame cos he could’ve had a big role to play in this brilliant Spain team.

Lopez is far from the biggest star in Barcelona’s team, but the La Masia academy graduate is quite the asset. Chelsea’s reported €40million bid looks hilariously cheeky in hindsight. He’s worth at least double that – maybe even triple in today’s market.

9. Martin Odegaard

Not the player he was a few years back. That much is clear from the sharp decline of his attacking output.

Odegaard wasn’t the star man of Arsenal’s long-awaited title triumph, nor was he Norway’s best player in their historic run to the World Cup quarter-finals. But even with a frustrating tendency to hold on to the ball that split second too long, he notched an excellent rate of four assists in five matches out in the United States this summer.

His underlying quality is still there, even if the numbers aren’t quite what they once were. If this is what an off year looks like for Odegaard, it says plenty about his class.

8. Florian Wirtz

Yeah, yeah. We know we left out Musiala on form. Where’s the consistency, you ask? A legitimate question and one we can only respond with a vague gut feeling answer.

He hasn’t lived up to the colossal fee Liverpool paid for his signature, and he didn’t have a great World Cup (although he was probably the best of a bad bunch in the shock elimination to Paraguay).

We simply refuse to give up on the promise of his Leverkusen days, and maybe we’re kidding ourselves that there were just enough flashes from his debut Liverpool season that he’ll come good in the end. But after a season of adaptation to a new league, and a new manager in Andoni Iraola, he’ll have no excuses in 2025-26.

Don’t make us look daft, Florian.

7. Cole Palmer

Another player that wasn’t at his best last season, with his omission from the England squad the price for that.

Really it’s been diminishing returns since his incredible debut season at Chelsea, arguably the most exciting campaign from a young English player since Dele Alli burst onto the scene a decade ago. Apologies in advance if we’ve just hexed him with that comparison.

A summer off might just be a blessing in disguise, given his recent record of niggles and injury woes. A fit and confident Palmer still walks into almost any team in Europe.

6. Morgan Gibbs-White

Gibbs-White wasn’t brilliant for the entirety of last season, but then neither was Premier League Player of the Season Bruno Fernandes.

Fernandes had the excuse of Ruben Amorim playing him too deep, while Gibbs-White struggled in the chaos of Nottingham Forest’s revolving door managerial policy.

There were very few as good as Gibbs-White in the latter half of the campaign, though. Twelve goals and three assists from 18 Premier League appearances in 2026 is proof of that. Very rarely did he draw a blank this calendar year.

5. Dani Olmo

Like Odegaard, Olmo leaves us with this minor sense of frustration that he’s not quite what he should or could be. Maybe we’re just too demanding of our continental creators.

You probably wouldn’t put him in Spain or Barcelona’s five best, most important or eye-catching players. And yet he’s just won back-to-back La Liga titles and the sodding World Cup, and is invariably entrusted to play when fit and available. We bow down to the knowledge of Hansi Flick and Luis de la Fuente.

He started every single knockout game in La Roja’s triumph this summer, while his quick one-two with Pedro Porro for the second goal against France was pass and move football at its best.

4. Rayan Cherki

Wirtz made the cut almost entirely on vibes.

Cherki has the vibes, but he’s got the numbers to match. As aesthetically pleasing as he is to watch, the playmaker finished his debut Man City season with 11 goals and 16 assists, repeatedly delivering when his side needed him most.

Fitting him into France’s already outrageous front four would’ve just been too much sauce.

Whether his languid style fits under an infamous taskmaster like Enzo Maresca remains to be seen, but we’re intrigued.

3. Nico Paz

“I’d bet on a young player like Nico Paz. I like him; he’s original, creative, and mischievous,” the legendary Francesco Totti said of Nico Paz in an interview with FIFA last year.

“Because of his youth, I think Madrid made the best choice. Putting him at Como so he can gain experience in Italian football, which isn’t easy. He’ll come back to Madrid and become one of the best players in the world.”

Wise words, Francesco.

Paz didn’t play a lot of minutes at the World Cup because it was difficult to fit him in alongside Lionel Messi. And it’s difficult to see quite where he fits in if Real Madrid exercise their much-publicised buyback clause, given – spoiler alert – who tops this list.

Put the 21-year-old in the right set-up and he’ll absolutely flourish. We’ve just seen him be Como’s best player as they qualified for the Champions League at the expense of traditional giants Milan and Juventus. It’s difficult to overstate how bonkers an achievement that is.

Argentina’s great hope after Messi hangs up his boots. The future looks just as bright in the club game, as long as he makes the right career choices. Playing top-level European football under the tutelage of Cesc Fabregas is the best place for him.

2. Bruno Fernandes

Fernandes played 185 key passes in the Premier League last season, which was 11 more than any other player in Europe’s five major leagues. That tallies with him breaking the single-season assist record. No fluke.

Strip away the noise around Manchester United and his individual campaign was comfortably the best of any player in his position across world football last season.

He failed to replicate that creative brilliance for Portugal at the World Cup, but we imagine playing in service to a walking-pace centre-forward who doesn’t press gave him flashbacks to Manchester United’s infamously disastrous 2021-22 campaign.

1. Jude Bellingham

For the second season running, Bellingham didn’t quite hit the heights expected of him. No major trophies. Fairly modest numbers. Questions over how he fits alongside Real Madrid’s other stars. And a growing sense of frustration amid the club’s wider issues.

It’s been a similar story for Kylian Mbappe, with the pair yet to fully click together at the Bernabeu.

But the World Cup offered a pretty clear explanation: the problem isn’t Bellingham or Mbappe. It’s Madrid. More specifically, it’s a midfield that still hasn’t adequately replaced Toni Kroos and Luka Modric.

Put Bellingham in a functioning system and he immediately reminded everyone what he can do. A devastatingly brilliant tournament, taking games by the scruff of their neck, he thrived in England’s best World Cup showing since 1966.

This was the same player who was a genuine Ballon d’Or contender a couple of years ago, driving Madrid to a Champions League and La Liga double. He hasn’t changed.

Madrid have an absolute superstar. Jose Mourinho needs to build a team that gets the best out of him.