Goal 50 winner Messi voted best player of all time by Goal readers

Lionel Messi has been overwhelmingly voted the greatest player of all-time by Goal readers, a week after being crowned Goal 50 winner for 2015.

The 28-year-old faced stiff competition from legends of the game but ultimately won with 53,904 people backing the Barcelona forward - a whopping 52 per cent of the 103,611 votes cast.

We must be living in the golden age of football because second place in the poll went to Real Madrid attacker Cristiano Ronaldo (11%), who finished just behind the Argentine in last week's Goal 50.

Messi and Ronaldo regularly find themselves battling for supremacy on and off the pitch, and they go head-to-head again in next month's Ballon d'Or final when Neymar will be joining them in the battle to be crowned as Fifa's best in the world.

Diego Maradona's heroics for club and country - most memorably winning the World Cup in 1986 with Argentina - have often earned him the status of the greatest football in history, but he's only fit for third place in our poll with 8% of votes.

Just adrift of Maradona with 7% is Brazilian goalscoring superstar Pele, who won three World Cups during his illustrious career, while Zinedine Zidane finishes fifth with 6% of the final tally.

Brazil idol Ronaldo (4%), Manchester United talent George Best (2%), Italy phenomenon Roberto Baggio (2%), Real Madrid goalscorer extraordinaire Alfredo Di Stefano (1%) and ex-West Germany skipper Franz Beckenbauer (1%) round off the top 10.