One number tells you how hard it is to be a great goalkeeper: one. That is how many times a keeper has won the Ballon d'Or in more than 60 years, and Lev Yashin did it back in 1963. No shot-stopper has managed it since.

That gap sums up the position. Keepers win matches, save World Cups and define eras, yet they rarely get the individual glory handed to strikers. So this list is our way of settling the debate.

We have ranked the ten best goalkeepers of all time, from the Soviet pioneer who reinvented the job to the giants still playing today. After the main order we run through the legends who narrowly missed, the modern keepers building their case, and Australia's finest between the sticks.

Yashin tops it. Here is why, and who follows.

How We Ranked Them

Comparing a 1960s keeper with a 2020s one is never clean, so we leaned on four things that is best to share before we get to name the legends featured on this list..

Longevity first, because the best keepers stayed at the top for a decade or more, not a hot season or two. Then comes the silverware at club and country, since a great keeper drags good teams to trophies.

We have also counted some 'moments,' because there are saves that live forever, and those must be taken into account. Finally, influence, because a few of these players changed how the position is played, and that legacy outlasts any medal.

No single keeper aces all four. The order below is our read on who came closest.

The best goalkeepers of all time, ranked

Start at the top, with the man every list starts with.

1. Lev Yashin

The only goalkeeper to win the Ballon d'Or, and the reason the award for the world's best keeper carries his name.

Yashin earned the nickname the Black Spider for the way he seemed to cover every corner of the goal, and he did it in an era when keepers were expected to stay glued to their line. He came off it instead, charging out to claim crosses and organising defenders around him, so modern goalkeeping really starts with him.

The numbers back the legend. He kept more than 270 clean sheets across his career with Dynamo Moscow and the Soviet Union, saved a reported 150-plus penalties, and won Olympic gold in 1956 and the 1960 European Championship.

Gordon Banks called him the model every keeper of his generation learned from. Six decades on, no keeper has matched the Ballon d'Or, which is why Yashin still sits alone at the top.

2. Gianluigi Buffon

If longevity and silverware decide it, Buffon has a genuine claim to the number one spot.

The Italian played top-flight football from 1995 to 2023, a 28-year career that ended back at his boyhood club Parma at the age of 45.

In between he won 10 Serie A titles with Juventus, a Ligue 1 crown with PSG, and the 2006 World Cup, where he was beaten by just an own goal and a penalty across the entire tournament.

He holds the record for the most top-three finishes at the IFFHS World's Best Goalkeeper awards, fourteen in all, with five wins. He also finished second in the 2006 Ballon d'Or, the closest a keeper has come to Yashin's feat since.

The one gap on the CV is the UEFA Champions League, which he never won - although he reached the final twice while at Juventus. It is the only reason he sits second rather than first.

3. Iker Casillas

Buffon's great rival for most of the 2000s, and the man who won the trophy Buffon never could.

Casillas made 725 appearances for Real Madrid and lifted two Champions Leagues, the first just days after his 19th birthday.

For Spain he was the last line of the finest international side of the modern era, captaining La Roja to back-to-back European titles either side of the 2010 World Cup.

His save against Arjen Robben in that 2010 final, a desperate outstretched leg with the score goalless, kept Spain alive and arguably won them the tournament. Fans called him San Iker, Saint Iker, and the reflexes earned it.

Five IFFHS best-keeper awards, five years running from 2008 to 2012, seal a top-three place.

4. Manuel Neuer

No keeper changed the modern game more than Neuer.

He turned the goalkeeper into an eleventh outfielder, sweeping up behind a high defensive line and starting attacks with his feet, and his display against Algeria at the 2014 World Cup was almost a coaching clinic on the role. Germany won that tournament with Neuer in goal and the Golden Glove on his shelf.

At Bayern Munich he became the bedrock of a relentless trophy machine, and the IFFHS named him the best keeper of the decade from 2011 to 2020.

The sweeper-keeper style every top side now demands traces back to him. That influence, stacked on top of the medals, puts him fourth.

5. Gordon Banks

One save made Banks immortal, but the career earned the ranking.

He was England's keeper when they won the 1966 World Cup on home soil, the country's only major trophy. Four years later in Mexico he produced the save every keeper still studies, somehow clawing a downward Pele header up and over the bar. Pele had already turned to celebrate.

Banks was far more than a highlight reel. The IFFHS voted him the second-best keeper of the entire 20th century, behind only Yashin.

A World Cup winner with the greatest save in the game's history to his name comfortably makes the top five.

6. Dino Zoff

Proof that a goalkeeper can peak deep into his forties.

Zoff captained Italy to the 1982 World Cup at the age of 40, still the oldest player to win the tournament. He built his reputation on positioning and calm rather than acrobatics, and he barely seemed to age, winning six Serie A titles with Juventus across a long and decorated stay.

He also set an Italy record for the longest run without conceding at international level in the early 1970s, a mark that stood for decades.

Longevity, a World Cup and total reliability put him sixth.

7. Peter Schmeichel

The benchmark for a commanding keeper in the Premier League era.

The great Dane was a giant in every sense, filling the goal with his frame and spreading himself with the star jumps that became his trademark.

He won 11 major trophies at Manchester United and captained the side on the night they completed the 1999 treble, the Champions League sealed in stoppage time.

Before that he pulled off one of international football's biggest shocks, keeping goal as unfancied Denmark won Euro 1992.

His son Kasper later won a Premier League title of his own with Leicester, but Peter remains the family's, and one of the league's, greatest.

8. Edwin van der Sar

Few keepers have been this good for this long in this many countries.

Van der Sar won league titles and a Champions League with Ajax, added Serie A experience at Juventus, then closed his career with a second Champions League at Manchester United well into his late thirties.

Calm, tall and comfortable with the ball at his feet long before it was fashionable, he was the template for the modern keeper before Neuer refined it.

He also holds one of the Premier League's most durable records, a run of 1,311 minutes without conceding a goal.

Sustained excellence across three of Europe's biggest leagues earns him eighth.

9. Oliver Kahn

The most ferocious competitor on this list.

Kahn was all intensity, a snarling, driven presence who dragged Bayern Munich and Germany through matches by sheer will.

At the 2002 World Cup he was close to unbeatable, carrying a modest German side to the final almost single-handedly, and he remains the only goalkeeper ever named player of the tournament at a World Cup.

He finished third in the 2002 Ballon d'Or and won a stack of Bundesliga -topping titles across a trophy-laden Bayern career.

That 2002 run alone would earn a place. The rest of the CV secures ninth.

10. Petr Cech

The most successful goalkeeper in Premier League history by one key measure.

Cech kept 202 clean sheets in the competition, a record that still stands and may never fall, split across trophy-laden spells at Chelsea and later Arsenal. He won four league titles and a Champions League with Chelsea, often behind a defence he organised as much as protected.

The protective headguard he wore after a serious skull fracture became his signature, a reminder of the bravery the job demands.

The clean-sheet king rounds out our top ten.

The modern keepers pushing for a place

The list so far leans heavily on retired greats, because all-time rankings should. But a handful of current keepers are writing CVs that will force their way in before long.

There is a betting angle here too. The Golden Glove, handed to the best keeper at a World Cup, is one of the markets punters follow closely each tournament, and the modern names below tend to headline it.

Emiliano Martinez took the 2022 award with Argentina, and City's Donnarumma will fancy his chances of adding one.

Our breakdown of the World Cup 2026 Golden Glove race covers where that market sits now.

Thibaut Courtois

Real Madrid's Belgian is the closest thing the modern game has to a big-game guarantee.

His performance in the 2022 Champions League final was one of the greatest a keeper has ever produced, nine saves to deny Liverpool and the man-of-the-match award as Madrid won the trophy. He took home the Yashin Trophy that year as the world's best, then added another Champions League in 2024.

At his size and with his reflexes, he has been the difference in more knockout ties than almost anyone. A genuine all-time contender.

Alisson Becker

Liverpool's Brazilian brought calm to a club that had lacked it in goal for years.

Alisson arrived on Merseyside and immediately turned nervy into serene, his shot-stopping and composure central to the Champions League and Premier League titles that followed.

He is widely rated the most complete keeper of his generation, as good with his feet as his hands, and he has even scored a stoppage-time winner with his head.

Keep piling up the clean sheets and the all-time conversation beckons.

Ederson

The keeper who took playing out from the back to a new level.

Ederson's range of passing at Manchester City was a genuine tactical weapon, a keeper who could drop a fifty-yard ball onto a winger's boot and effectively start attacks from his own six-yard box.

He won everything at City, including the 2023 treble, and reshaped what clubs expect a goalkeeper to do with the ball, a shift that has helped goalkeepers climb the ranks of the highest-paid footballers.

He has since moved on to Fenerbahce, but his influence on the position is already locked in.

Gianluigi Donnarumma

Buffon's heir, and quite possibly the best keeper in the world right now.

Donnarumma announced himself by saving the decisive penalty as Italy won Euro 2020, and he has barely looked back.

He won the Champions League with PSG in 2025 before a move to Manchester City, and in December 2025 FIFA named him the world's best men's goalkeeper.

Still in his twenties, he has the trophies, the awards and the years ahead to climb this list. Buffon himself tipped him as the successor, and it is easy to see why.

Australia's greatest goalkeeper

Mark Schwarzer is the finest goalkeeper this country has produced, and the numbers hold up in any company.

He kept 151 clean sheets in the Premier League, the third-most in the competition's history behind only Cech and David James, and he made more than 500 top-flight appearances, the first player from outside the British Isles to reach that mark.

For Australia’s national team he was irreplaceable. Schwarzer won a record 109 caps and kept a record 44 clean sheets, and every Australian football fan of a certain age knows exactly where the legend was cemented.

Sydney, November 2005. Australia against Uruguay, a World Cup place on the line and a 32-year drought hanging over the nation. Schwarzer saved two penalties in the shootout, John Aloisi buried the winner, and the Socceroos were off to their first World Cup since 1974.

He went on to play at the 2006 and 2010 tournaments, earned an Order of Australia, and sits comfortably among the best keepers the Premier League era has seen. For a kid from north-western Sydney, that is some legacy.