Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Alex Morgan and the 22 most marketable footballers in 2023

Now more than ever, football is a business - and that applies to individual players, too, with lucrative contracts on offer and brands vying for exposure at every turn once you achieve a certain status as a professional. But who are the most marketable players across the men's and women's games?

Sports business media company SportsPro has crunched the numbers, "applying an advanced science that goes beyond vanity metrics to measure which sports stars offer the most value to brands today". Using extensive data analysis, social media monitoring, economic valuations and qualitative research, they have come up with a definitive list of the 50 most marketable athletes in 2023, with each given a marketability score out of 100 - and 22 of them are footballers.

Below, GOAL lists those names from least to most marketable, and there are plenty of surprises...