Lothar Matthäus

Matthäus's 1990 Ballon d'Or was the capstone of a World Cup won as West Germany's field-general — the last tournament before the wall's rubble became one country, lifted by a man from both eras' football. His game was volume without waste: box-to-box for two decades, the engine of Inter's 1989 Scudetto and Bayern's 1990s, a penalty-taker of sniper temperament who missed almost nothing for club or country.

He played in five World Cups, a record he shares only with the goalkeepers' union, captained two finals eight years apart (1990 won, 1986 lost to Maradona), and was FIFA World Player of the Year in 1991. In the award's German ledger he is the hinge's other side: Beckenbauer's libero tradition compressed into a midfielder's lungs. Maradona, asked the hardest opponent he faced, answered with one name — and it was his.