Throughout the 2010s, Cristiano Ronaldo vs. Lionel Messi was the most heated debate on the lips of world football fans, but as time has passed and the discussions have become more retrospective, much of the discussion has moved towards the midfield.
It isn’t just Real Madrid and Barcelona fans getting into it about their elite midfields that dominated the 2010s, as Premier League supporters, Serie A fans, and, of course, the Bayern Munich faithful are wondering where their midfield stars stack up.
When looking back at the best center midfielders of the 2010s, it is no surprise to see that the teams that dominated the Champions League that decade – Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Bayern Munich – also dominate this list.
It’s fair to say that this observation is yet another endorsement of just how fundamentally important it is to have the right center midfield in place in order to ensure overall team success.
10. Paul Pogba, Juventus and Manchester United
Paul Pogba is the only Premier League player who makes this list, and he just barely squeezes ahead of former teammates Andrea Pirlo, Claudio Marchisio, and Arturo Vidal.
In truth, Pogba’s return to Manchester United was far from a successful one – though it was certainly better than his return to Juventus in the 2020s – and he never should have pushed his way out of Juventus.
When he was playing in Turin, Pogba was one of the most captivating players on the planet, scoring jaw-dropping outside-the-boot goals and providing a sense of excitement and industry as part of a world-class midfield that reached the 2014/15 Champions League Final against Barcelona’s MSN trio.
Pogba was a Serie A Team of the Season player in three straight seasons, but he achieved his greatest success with the French national team, reaching the 2016 European Championship Final and then winning the World Cup in 2018 as arguably his country’s most important player.
9. Xabi Alonso, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich
The ageless Xabi Alonso had already conquered the 2000s, in a way, winning the Champions League with Liverpool and establishing himself as a legend at one of England’s most historic clubs.
Alonso then moved to Real Madrid and played a pivotal role in the Merengue club’s turnaround in the 2010s, providing world-class displays as an anchoring point in the midfield when the Royal Whites won La Decima.
Despite being a defensive midfielder, Alonso had a season with nine assists for Real Madrid in LaLiga and was quietly a defensive stalwart, posting more than three tackles and three interceptions per game in the 2009/10 campaign.
In 2014 at the age of 32, Xabi Alonso moved to Bayern Munich and became an icon at that historic club, too, despite only spending three years in the Bundesliga.
8. Casemiro, Real Madrid
Casemiro proved to be the missing piece, because Real Madrid should have won the Champions League in the 2014/15 season with how brilliantly they played but came up short because Juventus embarrassed them without an actual defensive midfielder.
Signed from FC Porto, Casemiro was the best pure defender in a midfield role during his peak, walking a fine line between reckless and brutal.
The Brazilian international gave Real Madrid the final boost they needed to three-peat, and he would later win a fourth Champions League title in Royal White before embarking on an ill-fated journey to Manchester United.
Casemiro’s ball-playing abilities paled in comparison to teammates Toni Kroos and Luka Modric, but he was actually a decent offensive player from the No. 6 position; he merely stood out in a negative way because of the ridiculous players he was surrounded by.
7. Sergio Busquets, Barcelona
Sergio Busquets may never truly be replaced at Barcelona, and it seems like an exercise in futility to try and find someone who can replicate what the legendary defensive midfielder did in Catalunya.
Though he wasn’t the most physically imposing player, Busquets bossed the pitch with a titanic presence, reading the game at a higher level than any contemporary.
Busquets was just about flawless with his passing, needing very little in what was fanciful to make a profound impact on the match, always finding the best progressive option that could then truly launch the game forward.
Barcelona depended on Busquets to solidify the team’s defensive structure and serve as a point from which the entire team hinged and balanced their attack upon.
6. Bastian Schweinsteiger, Bayern Munich
Versatile and industrious, Bayern Munich midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger began his career as a winger, first making a name for himself on an international stage for Germany at the 2006 World Cup they hosted and finished third in.
Schweinsteiger is one of the classiest and most beloved midfielders in the history of German football, becoming an entity much bigger than himself at Bayern Munich, to the point where his farewell to Manchester United was one of the most touching moments of the 2010s.
Bayern built a juggernaut with Schweinsteiger in the middle, as he was the somewhat underappreciated superstar of a team that boasted leading goal-scorers, the flashiest goalkeeper in the business in Manuel Neuer, and one of the best winger duos in history in Franck Ribery and Arjen Robben.
Schweiny had two seasons with double-digit goal contributions in midfield, and he regularly posted more than three tackles per game as an elite ball-winner.
5. Thiago Alcantara, Bayern Munich and Barcelona
As brilliant as Bastian Schweinsteiger was for Bayern Munich in the early 2010s, he wasn’t actually the most impressive Bayern midfielder of the decade.
That honor has to go to Thiago Alcantara, whose only blemish was an injury record that forced him into retirement this year after a mildly disappointing spell with Liverpool.
At his peak, Thiago was arguably even better than the great Bayern Munich midfielder who left for Real Madrid prior to his arrival, Toni Kroos.
Thiago was Pep Guardiola’s protege at Barcelona, but he never really broke out until he joined Bayern, busting out of the shadow of Xavi and Andres Iniesta to become a midfielder nearly on the level of those two titans of Spanish football.
The Bayern star could defend as well as any defensive midfielder in the world and pass the ball as adeptly as any playmaker, standing out as the key player on the Bayern side that won the treble in 2019/20.
4. Toni Kroos, Real Madrid
It’s wild to think that Toni Kroos was only the fourth-best center midfielder of the 2010s, but that’s because he shared the decade with three midfielders who all literally have a GOAT case next to Kroos’ own manager, Zinedine Zidane.
Kroos also didn’t start the 2010s as a superstar, while a lot of his finest work in the Real Madrid midfield came in the 2020s when he added two more Champions League titles to his resume.
One of the best passers of all time, Kroos had four seasons with double-digit league assists in his career and completed exactly 90 percent of his passes by the time he hung up his iconic cleats at the end of another fine season in 2024.
At the international level, Kroos was often crucified by the notoriously galaxy-brained German media, only to reprove himself to the masses at Euro 2024 after retiring when he was scapegoated at Euro 2020 despite being his country’s best player.
And Germany’s best player he was at the 2014 World Cup in which they returned to the true summit of world football, rating as the best player in the entire tournament in the analytics.
3. Xavi, Barcelona
Xavi gets the all-time edge over Andres Iniesta because of how much more defensive work he had to do, because he was the one tasked with doing so much more of the progressing and ball-winning so that Iniesta could excel in more attacking positions as a playmaker.
But in truth, you can’t have one without the other, as Xavi and Iniesta almost seemed to share the same footballing brain for both club and country, forming a partnership that will likely never be seen or remotely replicated in the future.
Xavi had a jaw-dropping 43 assists from the 2008/09 to the 2010/11 seasons at his peak, and then he scored a career-high 10 goals in the 2011/12 season.
In a ranking of the best midfield players of the 2010s decade, though, Xavi has to take a backseat because his best years were moreso in the 2000s, as he finished his illustrious career with Barcelona after winning the treble in 2014/15 with Luis Suarez, Neymar, and Messi.
2. Andres Iniesta, Barcelona
Since Andres Iniesta began his Barcelona career with the first team in 2002, a lot of his accomplishments aren’t reflected in a ranking specifically looking at the 2010s.
Still, Iniesta achieved more than enough in this decade, including a World Cup title to kick it off, in a season in which he came very close to breaking the Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi hegemony over the Ballon d’Or.
Iniesta then added the second European Championship triumph of his career with Spain two years later, making the FIFA Pro World XI in every single season from 2010 to 2017.
In the 2012/13 season, Iniesta had an unsightly 16 assists, playmaking to an elite degree for Barcelona while providing the kind of progressive work and dribbling skills that made him one of world football’s most uniquely effective players.
Anyone ranking Iniesta as the best midfielder of the 2010s would be well within their right to do so, and the battle between himself and Xavi as Barca’s greatest center midfielder is one that will never be settled.
1. Luka Modric, Real Madrid
Because the stars perfectly aligned for Luka Modric to spend the peak of his career through the 2010s, there really shouldn’t be a question that Luka Modric was the best midfielder of the decade.
He is still going strong as a key rotational player for a loaded Real Madrid midfield in 2024, and every time critics say that he is finished or nearing the end, Modric goes out and has a Man of the Match-caliber display in a big spot.
What Modric has achieved at Real Madrid is impressive in its own right, as it is unthinkable for a box-to-box midfielder to still be playing at a top-class level for the best team in the world at the age of 38.
But what he has done in leading Croatia to World Cup success at multiple tournaments, including a Final appearance in 2018, has to be even more impressive.
For his efforts that year, Modric won the Ballon d’Or as a World Cup finalist and Champions League winner, and while some fans retroactively wonder if Cristiano Ronaldo had the superior year overall, what Modric accomplished in football in 2018 definitely merited the Ballon d’Or.
Modric could do it all in the center of the park. Create chances from nothing, score magical goals from range, open up defenses with a trivela, skip past the press in his own half, find teammates in space, and weave through center backs in the box.
The Croatian magician’s nonstop engine brought fans to their feet, and his class brought tears to even the eyes of the opposing crowd.
Modric crafted a legacy at Real Madrid beyond even what Zidane could, and his place among the pantheon of the greatest midfielders of all time is sealed, with Lukita perhaps residing at the very top.
