With the UEFA Champions League returning this week, here are 10 footballers who failed to lift the coveted trophy despite being widely considered among the game's greatest players.
Click through the gallery above to see some of the best players to never win Europe's biggest club competition.
While they both have remarkable goalscoring records in league football, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are held in incredibly high esteem due to their prowess on the Champions League stage – Europe's biggest club competition.
Both superstars have popped up in important moments to score some of the competition's most memorable goals, and have almost single-handedly dragged their respective teams to finals and final victories.
For many other great players, however, winning the Champions League did not happen, and for a host a different reasons. Ronaldo Nazario failed to lift the famous trophy despite being considered to be the greatest No. 9 of all time. To add to that, he only scored 14 goals in 40 UCL games.
Legendary Juventus goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon is another iconic footballer who has not managed to win the prize to date, losing in three finals, while his former colleague Zlatan Ibrahimovic is also on our list.
Former Chelsea midfielder Michael Ballack did not win it either, but who knows how close he would have gone had he taken his career to Manchester United instead of the Blues from Bayern Munich in 2006?
The German has previously admitted that he decided to join Jose Mourinho's project in England over Sir Alex Ferguson's at the Red Devils, whom he lost to in the 2008 final in Russia.
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To see some more great footballers who never won the Champions League, click through the gallery above!
