Where do Luka Modric, Toni Kroos rank among the best midfielders in the world?

6.  PSG CM Marco Verratti

Since Ligue 1 is usually very uninteresting to the average football fan – PSG didn’t have a great season, yet they still won the league by 15 points over rivals Marseille – Marco Verratti is especially easy to overlook. He isn’t one of the superstars scoring goals or grabbing headlines off the pitch; he is the composer in midfield who is the reason why players like Kylian Mbappe, Neymar, and Lionel Messi can rack up goals and assists.

It is not easy to outplay the Real Madrid midfield, but that is exactly what Marco Verratti did in the first leg at the Parc des Princes. Granted, Carlo Ancelotti corrected things so that his world-class players performed better at the Santiago Bernabeu, but Verratti deserves a lot of respect for his performance at home.

A world-class midfielder who has been at the top of his game for years, Verratti is one of those players who you kind of feel for from a sporting perspective. Because outside of the purgatory of PSG, he’d be a much more celebrated midfield general.

5. Real Madrid CM Toni Kroos

Though the premier midfield general is Toni Kroos. It feels cheap ranking him fifth, because he is in the top three when at his absolute best. It’s just that there are a pair of fellow Bayern Munich ballers who have been a touch above Kroos this season. That has a bit to do with the flow of games under Carlo Ancelotti, who is not really enabling Kroos to control the midfield as much.

Even so, Kroos is still locked in as one of the best five midfielders in the world, even over other standouts like Bernardo Silva and Sergej Milinkovic-Savic.

Kroos is the world’s best passer. He completes 94 percent of his passes in the Champions League and about 95 percent of his passes in LaLiga. Those are unheard of numbers, yet Kroos has done it year after year since coming to the Spanish capital from Bavaria.