- Football’s global influence continues to grow, bridging politics, culture, and economics.
- Several key figures are responsible for this increased globalistaion, and popularity, of the sport.
- The top 10 most influential figures in football impact the game administratively and on the pitch, and GIVEMESPORT have identified them.
Football has never been more globalised, with the sport transcending the boundaries of world politics, culture and economics. Its significance across the planet has grown exponentially in the last decade, and the indications are that it’ll only continue in this direction.
At the centre of the beautiful game’s prominence are some incredibly powerful, and hugely influential, figures. These people help determine the direction of the sport, both administratively away from the pitch and what actually entails on the pitch.
While some single-handedly control football’s infrastructure, others’ sheer notoriety across the globe influences people on a more personal level. With this in mind, GIVEMESPORT has identified and ranked the ten most influential people in football right now, based on a number of factors:
Ranking Factors:
- Current Impact on the Game – how their actions, policies or decisions are shaping football today.
- Global Reach and Influence – their popularity and visibility worldwide.
- Financial Power – their financial clout and how they use it to shape football.
- Innovations or Contributions – revolutionising tactics, consistently aiding player development or introducing new technologies or systems.
- Success and Achievements – managing major accomplishments in their field within the game.
10 Carlo Ancelotti
Current Role: Manager of Real Madrid
One of the most successful managers in the 21st century, Carlo Ancelotti’s extensive list of major honours means he inevitably inspires coaches across the globe, while merely being in the Bernabeu hot seat and thus at the summit of football management, means his decisions certainly influence proceedings lower down the food chain.
Perhaps not quite celebrated in the same tactical realm as Pep Guardiola, Ancelotti’s own style has no doubt had an impact on how coaches approach the game. The Italian’s laissez-faire attitude towards allowing his best players to express themselves, and creating systems tailor-made to the crop of players available to him, has become its own philosophical outlook on the game that many others have followed.
Trailblazing this style in this generation, Ancelotti will have a long-lasting legacy as a generational manager when he eventually retires. And that’s not even getting into his playing career.
9 Florentino Perez
Current Role: President of Real Madrid
Florentino Perez is one of the most powerful figures in European football in particular. The driving force behind the Super League, Real Madrid’s president remains insistent on the concept materialising and has relaunched the competition as the ‘Unify League’, which is seeking official endorsement from UEFA.
Perez will continue to push the idea of a closed-shop, elitist division, and he may well eventually get his wish. The Spaniard is constantly bringing forward new ideas that he believes will improve the game as a product, some of which are becoming increasingly heard by governing bodies.
Aside from these attempts to evolve the sport, the relentless and significant investment in elite players for Real Madrid generally sets the tone of the entire transfer market and has cascading effects on other deals, with Los Blancos at the top of the food chain.
8 Jurgen Klopp
Current Role: Head of Global Soccer for Red Bull
A founding father of Gegenpressing, Jurgen Klopp’s ‘heavy metal’ football has brought a new wave of tactical innovations into the game. Introducing the concept of aggressively pressing as soon as his team loses the ball in his early days at Mainz, Klopp developed the system at Borussia Dortmund and Liverpool, and this style became synonymous with him.
German football has particularly embraced this philosophy, with the Bundesliga becoming a haven for gegenpressing enthusiasts in the mid-to-late 2010s. An entire generation of coaches from the European nation, as well as increasingly in other places, have been taught how to implement cohesive pressing systems, based on Klopp’s initial ideas and core principles.
Now in a more holistic role with Red Bull, he’ll be continuing to imprint his footballing views on one of the biggest multi-club organisations in the game.
7 Cristiano Ronaldo
Current Role: Player for Al-Nassr
Influential for very different reasons to the aforementioned trio, Cristiano Ronaldo’s fame and visibility worldwide make him a culturally significant figure. The most followed footballer on Instagram in the world, the Portuguese has 645 million followers on the platform, a number no one else on the planet boasts.
This is a pretty indicative metric for notoriety and inevitably means the player influences people’s lives on a more personal scale than most within football. However, Ronaldo’s influence extends to the professional side of the game, with his freakish athleticism and physical durability no doubt inspiring players across the globe. The way in which he looks after his body will be studied by others hoping to enjoy as lengthy a career as Ronaldo, and he’s certainly taken the notion of fitness to another level.
6 Lionel Messi
Current Role: Player for Inter Miami
Widely understood to be the greatest player of all time, Lionel Messi’s mesmeric exploits on the pitch throughout the years have brought joy to millions of people. Impacting so many fans’ viewing experience of the beautiful game, his elusive dribbling style has also unquestionably provided the blueprint for what young attacking players aspire to be. His diminutive figure and seeming lack of physicality hasn’t prevented him from dominating against more robust players, and hasn’t prevented him from maintaining an elite level for such a long time.
Like Ronaldo, Messi’s career has been ridiculously illustrious, making him one of the most successful athletes of all time.
5 Jorge Mendes
Current Role: Agent
Arguably the most notorious super-agent in the game, Jorge Mendes has represented a broad range of elite and emerging talents, including the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Bernardo Silva and Joao Felix. The Portuguese businessman is known for leveraging his clients and connections to influence coaching appointments and club strategies, as well as engineering and facilitating high-value transfers.
Given the extensive pool of players his agency Gestifute represents, Mendes has significant power in regard to dictating who goes where in the transfer market. Essentially conducting the transfer whirlwind, his decisions, driven by him and his clients’ commercial interests, inevitably have material effects on which clubs thrive and how things play out in major competitions.
4 Pep Guardiola
Current Role: Manager of Manchester City
Considered by many to be among the top three managers of all time, Pep Guardiola’s tactical influence on the game over the last 15 to 20 years is arguably greater than any other coach. Constantly evolving, the crux of Guardiola’s philosophy has stemmed around maintaining and recycling possession, and playing a high defensive line, while he’s also adopted a high press in most of his teams.
Guardiola has also initiated several more minor tactical nuances in his time. The Spaniard has pioneered the idea of playing out from the back with short passes, and this staple feature of the modern game has single-handedly changed the demands on defenders and goalkeepers, who have to be significantly more astute in possession than they previously had been.
The inventor of inverted full-backs, the creator of the 3-2-2-3 formation used during Manchester City’s treble-winning season and several more innovative ideas, Guardiola is said to have influenced the likes of Mauricio Sarri, Mikel Arteta, Thomas Tuchel, Graham Potter and Luis Enrique.
3 Arsene Wenger
Arsene Wenger was a hugely influential managerial figure during his Arsenal tenure. The Frenchman revolutionised how players treated their bodies, regimenting their diet and nutrition, while he brought an artistic and free-flowing style to what had been an industrious English game, and also spearheaded the influx of foreign players into the Premier League.
However, Wenger’s influence on world football in his current role is much greater than the power he had in the dugout at Highbury and the Emirates. Employed by world footballing governing body FIFA as the Chief of Global Football Development, the 75-year-old is literally responsible for overseeing and driving the growth of the sport as a whole, at both grassroots and professional levels.
Thus, the decisions he makes now could have significant impacts on how the game develops over the next decade or so, while he’s also garnered senior authority as a member of the Football and Technical Advisory Panel, involved in giving judgement on rule-changes mandated by the FA.
2 Aleksandr Ceferin
Current Role: President of UEFA
With a background in law and football administration, Aleksandr Ceferin was promoted from president of the Slovenian FA to president of UEFA in 2016. The role makes him one of the most powerful decision-makers in football, essentially overseeing the Euros, the Champions League, the Europa League and the Conference League, while also enacting Financial Fair Player Regulations (FFPR).
Ceferin’s job description also involves maintaining strong communications with key political figures, including members of the European Parliament, the Council of Europe and the European Commission. At the heart of the relationship between football and the geopolitics of the continent, he’s also responsible for ensuring the continual development of grassroots and women’s football.
1 Gianni Infantino
Current Role: President of FIFA
Formerly in Ceferin’s position, Gianni Infantino’s role as FIFA president is essentially the same as the Slovenian’s, but just on a global scale. The most senior figure within world football’s governing body, the Swiss oversees global football operations, influencing decisions that affect the sport worldwide.
Having a huge hand in who hosts the World Cup every four years, Infantino also spearheaded the expansion of the tournament from 32 teams to 48, starting in 2026. He’s also overseen the revamp of the FIFA Club World Cup, earmarking a summer tournament that will take place every four years, like the international iteration, starting in 2025.
Infantino has also implemented the FIFA Forward Programme, which provides financial support to national football associations to improve infrastructure and grassroots development, while he’s an advocate and driver for the use of VAR. Despite these achievements, the FIFA president faces severe criticism for the organisation’s handling of certain issues, related to the awarding of the 2022 World Cup and the 2034 World Cup.
All Statistics via TransferMarkt – correct as of 19/12/2024