Marco van Basten

Van Basten's three Ballon d'Ors frame a career that was half as long as it deserved. The 1988 one was sealed in the European Championship final by a volley from an angle football had previously agreed was unusable — a shot of such purity that the Soviet goalkeeper applauded it from the turf. That summer he also won the World Player of the Year and the European Cup with an AC Milan side of historic ambition.

A resilient series of ankle injuries — untreated, misdiagnosed, finally merciless — took him out of the game at 28, at the exact moment the false nine role was waiting to be invented and he was the only man who could have played it. His farewell match in 1995 closed the era of the pure striker-poet. The game still measures beautiful finishers against him, and they still fall short. If football kept a museum of what grace looks like, the 1988 volley has a room to itself.