Iconic teams, players and matches

Football's history has produced a small number of teams, players and matches that are widely returned to whenever the game is discussed. They are the reference points — the examples used to illustrate ideas, the examples later sides are compared with, the games quoted to explain what was new about a tactical era. They are not presented as the best of all time; what makes them iconic is that football has continued to return to them.

The lists below are intended as starting points rather than league tables. They reflect names that come up regularly across credible football writing and broadcasting, and that anyone learning the game will meet repeatedly. There are no rankings, no "greatest" claims, and no attempt to settle arguments that football itself has not settled.

Across the decades, certain teams have become shorthand for an idea. The Hungarian side of the early 1950s is shorthand for tactical innovation. The Brazil sides of 1958, 1962 and especially 1970 are shorthand for attacking flair. Ajax in the early 1970s, Milan in the late 1980s, and Barcelona in the late 2000s are shorthand for clear, demanding playing systems. Liverpool and Real Madrid sides at different points in their long European histories are shorthand for sustained continental dominance.

These teams come up in football conversation more often than others not because they are unanimously the best, but because they were clear examples of an idea at the time. They give writers, coaches and supporters a common language to talk about football.

Iconic players are those whose names are routinely used as shorthand for a position, a style, or an era. Pelé and Diego Maradona belong to that group because of what they did at World Cups and how they played; Johan Cruyff because of total football and what he later did as a coach; Franz Beckenbauer because he changed how a defender could play. Alfredo Di Stéfano, Ferenc Puskás, George Best, Eusébio and Bobby Charlton appear in any account of the game's earlier history, and later generations have produced names that appear in many accounts of the modern game.

As with iconic teams, the list is not closed and the names are not ranked. Iconic players come from every generation and every part of the world. What they share is that they changed something about how the game is played or how it is remembered.

The 1953 match between England and Hungary at Wembley is an iconic match because it changed English football's relationship with the rest of the world. The 1950 Maracanazo — Brazil's home defeat to Uruguay in the deciding match of the World Cup — is iconic because of the scale of the upset and the size of the crowd. Italy's 4-3 win over West Germany in the 1970 World Cup semi-final, the 1986 World Cup quarter-final between Argentina and England, the 1999 Champions League final and the 2005 Champions League final are all matches that come up regularly when football is discussed.

What makes a match iconic is not always the quality of the football. Some are remembered for tactical reasons, some for a single moment, some for what they meant outside the sport. Sorting which matches belong on the list is itself part of how football's history is written.

Pelé's near-miss from the halfway line against Czechoslovakia in 1970, Carlos Alberto's goal in the same tournament's final, Maradona's two goals against England in 1986, Roberto Baggio's missed penalty in the 1994 final, Zinedine Zidane's red card in the 2006 final and Andrés Iniesta's winning goal in the 2010 final are all moments that have entered football's wider memory beyond the matches they came from.

These moments tend to combine the World Cup's natural drama — the fact that everything is at stake within a single tournament — with the players or teams involved. Together, they are how the World Cup builds its own history.

Several European Cup finals are widely remembered for the football, the result or the wider context. Real Madrid's 7-3 win over Eintracht Frankfurt in 1960 is often used to describe the early dominance of the competition. Manchester United's 1968 final, won ten years after the Munich air disaster, is remembered for its emotional weight. The 1985 Heysel disaster is a separate but inescapable part of the competition's history. From the rebranded Champions League era, the 1999, 2005 and 2014 finals are among the most discussed.

As with iconic World Cup moments, the matches that endure tend to combine sport with something more — a comeback, a context, a moment beyond the result.

The USA sides that won the 1991, 1999, 2015 and 2019 Women's World Cups, Germany's teams of the 2000s, Spain's 2023 World Cup-winning side, and the growth of leading European national teams have each shaped the women's game's history. Players including Mia Hamm, Marta, Birgit Prinz and Homare Sawa are routinely listed in any account of women's international football. The 1999 Women's World Cup final in Pasadena, with its full Rose Bowl crowd, is iconic in the same sense as men's finals — a single match that came to mean more than its result.

Women's club football has also developed its own reference points. Clubs such as Lyon and Barcelona in the UEFA Women's Champions League, and leading NWSL sides in the United States, have added important examples to the women's club game. The women's game is younger than the men's in its modern professional form, and its history should be read with the periods of restriction and revival in mind.