Gerd Müller

Müller's 1970 Ballon d'Or rewarded the most absurd scoring season of the award's first half-century: 38 league goals in a league famed for locking doors, and ten goals at the World Cup in Mexico — the tournament's record until 2002. He did nothing that highlight reels reward: no long runs, no geometry, nothing above waist height. He lived in the penalty area's shadow, first to every rebound, wrong-footing goalkeepers with shots that seemed to arrive through the net rather than across the line.

The full harvest came after the award: the 1972 European Championship, then the 1974 World Cup on home soil, settled by his winner in the final — the goal that mattered most in a career of four hundred. His 68 goals for West Germany stood until 2006; his 365 league goals stood until the modern era of long careers. Der Bomber remains the standard by which pure scorers are measured, which is to say: still measured against him.