22 July 2026
Rodri's Haul: Has Any Player Ever Completed Football?
A Guardian deep-dive asks whether Spain's Rodri, already a Ballon d'Or and Champions League winner, has now collected every prize the sport has to offer.
With the 2026 World Cup now in the books, The Guardian poses a delicious question: has any footballer in history ticked every major box the game can offer? The piece centres on Rodri, who arrived in North America already holding a Ballon d'Or, a Champions League winners' medal and a European Championship title, and has now added a World Cup winners' medal with Spain.
The Knowledge column digs into the record books across multiple categories, and in doing so surfaces some stunning tournament statistics. Michael Olise set a new all-time record for assists at a single World Cup with seven, overtaking a six-assist haul set by Pele at the 1970 tournament. Messi, Mbappe and Odegaard also feature among the tournament's top providers.
The broader question of whether one player can ever truly complete football is, according to The Guardian, harder to answer than it sounds, partly because meaningful stats from the early decades of the competition simply do not exist.
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