The Greatest Serie A XIs You Can Draft

Every player in 38-0-0 Serie A is rated per club and per season — a legend's peak year scores differently from his farewell tour. Out of the whole database, spanning 55 clubs from 1929 to 2022, exactly seven players reach the maximum rating of 97. Meet the ceiling of the game.

The 97 club

Notice the pattern: four of the seven wore black and white. When the wheel lands on a Juventus season, pay attention.

The theoretical best XI

If the wheel were kind enough to offer all of them — it won't be — the highest-rated 4-2-3-1 the database allows looks like this:

• Goal: Buffon (97)
• Defence: Zanetti (96) — Cannavaro (96) — Baresi (96) — Maldini (97)
• Holding: Pirlo (96) — De Rossi (96)
• Attacking line: Cristiano Ronaldo (97) — Zidane (97) — Ronaldinho (96)
• Striker: Ronaldo il Fenomeno (96) or Totti (97) pushed up front

Average rating: north of 96. Real drafts live twelve points below that, which is why the perfect season stays rare even in a game built to allow it.

Eras that hide elite picks

• Milan, 1985–2010. From Baresi and Maldini through Shevchenko, Kaká, Pirlo and Ronaldinho — a quarter-century where almost any spin is a gift.
• Juventus, any decade. Zoff and Platini in the old years, Zidane and Del Piero in the 90s, Buffon and Chiellini in the 2000s, Cristiano Ronaldo in 2018. The deepest single-club vein in the database.
• Inter, mid-90s to late 2000s. Zanetti and Ronaldo il Fenomeno, later Ibrahimović — plus the 2006/07 squad that set the real 97-point record.
• The one-season wonders. Maradona's Napoli, Mancini's Sampdoria, Hamšík's Napoli: elite ratings hiding outside the usual three giants, which matters when you play with the single-club lock.

Remember the ratings are per season: Cristiano Ronaldo is a 97 in the 2018 Juventus squad and nothing anywhere else, because he never played Serie A anywhere else. In hidden ratings mode this per-season logic is the entire skill — a great name in the wrong year is the trap the shuffle sets for you.