Maradona, the understatement of Messi and Ronaldo ... ignored a public vote for the 50 best athletes of all time

Despite the overwhelming popularity of football stars worldwide, other sports stars overwhelmed them in a controversial public vote to choose the 50 best sports stars of all time.

Former American basketball legend Michael Jordan won the top ranking as the best athlete ever by fans around the world, followed by the late American boxing legend Muhammad Ali Clay.

Only four football stars included in the list of fifty, the first of them being Brazilian Pele, who finished ninth, Argentine stars Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo ranked 14th and 15th respectively, and Zlatan Ibrahimovic came in the 50th position.

It appears that most of the participants in the vote conducted by "TheTopTens" are Americans, as American sports stars dominated the vote, noting that basketball, baseball, and American football are the most popular in the United States.

Strangely enough, the American tennis star Serena Williams was the only woman to enter the list of fifty, and she ranked 26th.

Ice hockey star Wayne Gretzky finished third, followed by baseball legend Pep Roth, and then swimming icon Michael Phelps, crowned 23 times Olympic gold medalist, finished first five.

Jamaican enemy legend Usain Bolt came in sixth, followed by comprehensive sporting phenomenon Jim Thorpe - who played baseball, basketball, and American football, in addition to competition in the pentagon and decathlon - followed by Bo Jackson, the baseball and American football star.

Pele was the first non-American sports star on the ninth-ranked list, before tennis star Roger Federer.

This list received widespread objections from some of the fans and the stars who also included it, as one of the Twitter users said, "The American list ... Americans think once again that they are the whole world," while wrestling champion John Cena, who finished 25, commented sarcastically "How Can you take this (classification) seriously? ".

"How is Federer in the top ten while Nadal is not even in the top 50?" Another critic of the rating said on Twitter, and another objected, "The bias toward Americans and their lack of recognition of sports all over the world. Zlatan and Pele over Maradona or (George) Best?").