David Raya has become the first Arsenal player to feature in the FIFPRO World 11 since Thierry Henry, with a couple of his teammates only narrowly missing out.
After tallying up 19,806 votes from professional men’s footballers across 73 countries, FIFPRO named their World 11 on Monday night, with Arsenal’s David Raya making the cut.
Raya is the first Arsenal player to be included in the World 11 since Thierry Henry in 2006, and he’s one of just two Premier League players in the 2026 side alongside Erling Haaland (or three if you include Rodri).
It wasn’t a close race in the goalkeeper position, with Raya receiving more than 2,500 more votes than his nearest competitor. In fact, the goalkeeper received more votes than anyone else in the entire lineup, with over half of the voters picking him.
Arsenal were rather unlucky not to have at least one more player in the lineup. Gabriel Magalhaes received the second-most votes of any centre-back, only behind Pau Cubarsi of Barcelona and Spain.
But the award organisers opted to select a team with only three defenders, one of whom was a left-back, and another a right-back. So with only one centre-back spot in the side, Gabriel missed out.
If the team used a formation that a real football team might use, Gabriel would have been included, as it’s very hard to think of any team in world football that only uses one centre-back.
William Saliba was also very close to making the cut, as both Gabriel and Saliba finished within 1,000 votes of Cubarsi.
Declan Rice was the other Arsenal player to receive a significant quantity of votes, but he wasn’t particularly close to making the final team. Though he received over 3,000 votes, that was around 2,500 short of anyone in the top-three.
Raya sent a message to the voters after receiving his award, saying: “Thank you guys for voting me into the FIFPRO World 11. It’s incredible how you guys have voted for me. Thank you very much to everyone that has chosen me to be part of this, and keep doing your thing.”
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