Álvaro Morata: Best on One List, Last on Another

Spain won the World Cup on 19 July 2026, beating Argentina 1-0 in New York New Jersey through a substitute's goal in extra time.¹ Álvaro Morata, who had captained the side that won Euro 2024 and the Nations League before it, was not there. Luis de la Fuente named his 26 players on 25 May and Morata's name was not on the list.²

That absence fits the rest of the career. Real Madrid, Juventus and Atlético Madrid have each signed Morata more than once, and each of them let him go again.

Nine of the thirteen rankings below are honours lists. Two are complaints, one counts passport stamps, and the last is a register of players who were somewhere else in July.

Morata's medals and Morata's reputation describe two different footballers, and no single ranking can hold both.

David Villa, Raúl and the 37 goals Morata scored for Spain

The obvious one first. Who is the best striker Spain has produced? The field holds Morata, David Villa, Raúl and Fernando Torres.

Morata's claim is arithmetic. The profile AC Milan published the week it signed him in July 2024 put him fourth on Spain's all-time scoring list,³ and Como counted 37 international goals when he arrived in Lombardy.⁴

Scoring was never the doubt about him. Before the senior side he took 13 goals from 13 official matches for Spain's under-21s and 11 from 13 for the under-19s.³

The counter-case is who sits above him. Villa, Raúl and Fernando Torres are all there, and Morata's reply to the three of them is a captain's armband rather than a bigger number.

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Spain since 2020: Morata against Ferran Torres

Shrink the window to this decade and the field changes completely. This ranking asks who has scored the goals that mattered for Spain since 2020, and it sets Morata against Ferran Torres.

Morata's decade is the one with the trophies in it. He wore the armband for the 2023 Nations League win and for Euro 2024.⁴

Ferran Torres has a shorter, louder claim. He came off the bench to decide the 2026 World Cup final,¹ and he was one of the forwards de la Fuente took to the tournament Morata missed.²

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Euro 2024: Morata's armband, Lamine Yamal's tournament

This ranking narrows to one squad and one summer, and asks which Spain player was the best of Euro 2024.

Morata's answer is the armband. He captained the team and lifted the trophy, and AC Milan signed him days afterwards as the newly crowned European champion.³

The rest of that squad is why the field is brutal. Rodri, Lamine Yamal and Dani Olmo were all in Germany with him, and all three were still in the squad two years later when he was not.²

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Chelsea's No. 9, and the shadow Didier Drogba left

Chelsea's centre-forward ranking is the least comfortable club section Morata appears in — Drogba is the reason.

Morata took the No. 9 in July 2017, and Chelsea never disclosed what they paid for it.⁵

Morata did win something in the shirt. He headed Chelsea in front in the 2018 FA Cup semi-final against Southampton at Wembley, and played the closing minutes of the final they won against Manchester United.⁶

Chelsea's own farewell measures the whole spell at two years.⁶ Drogba, Gianfranco Zola and Diego Costa all had considerably longer than that.

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Juventus paid €20m for Morata; Real Madrid kept a clause

The Juventus ranking asks who has been the best centre-forward in the club's history, which puts Morata in with David Trezeguet.

Juventus bought Morata from Real Madrid in July 2014 for €20 million on a five-year contract, and wrote into the deal Real Madrid's right to buy him back for up to €30 million.⁷

Real Madrid recalled him two years later,³ and Juventus borrowed him again in 2020. Across the two spells Morata scored 59 goals in the shirt, won two league titles, two Italian Cups and an Italian Super Cup, and played in the 2015 Champions League final in Berlin.⁸

Trezeguet is the difficulty, and he is not alone in it. Juventus have had a century of centre-forwards, and Morata's case against them is narrow: he is one of the very few the club went back for.

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Atlético Madrid had Morata first, at about ten years old

This ranking wants Atlético Madrid's best strikers, and the reason Morata qualifies is older than any of his transfers.

Morata was an Atlético academy player before he was anything else. The club's own welcome note in 2019 records four seasons in its youth ranks, joining as an alevín, one of the youngest brackets in Spanish football, and playing alongside Koke.⁹

Atlético then signed him twice more. They took him on loan from Chelsea in January 2019,⁹ lent him on to Juventus for two seasons,⁸ and kept him until July 2024, when LaLiga informed the club that his release clause had been paid, closing a spell of 154 games and 58 goals.¹⁰

Griezmann, Agüero, Falcao and Forlán make up the company on the list, and every one of them arrived at the club as a finished player.

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La Fábrica: Morata's third Madrid academy

The academy ranking asks which player Real Madrid's youth system produced best, and sets Morata against Raúl.

Morata is a Real Madrid graduate by the club's own reckoning, though he reached it by an odd route. AC Milan's profile traces him through Atlético's youth sector, then Getafe's, then Real Madrid from 2008, and dates his first-team debut to 12 December 2010 against Real Zaragoza.³

Three Madrid academies is an unusual line on a footballer's file — it is why Morata belongs both here and in the Atlético ranking. His best season back in white was 2016/17, when he scored 15 goals in 26 league matches.³

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Antonio Conte's striker, among Hazard, Pirlo and Kane

Antonio Conte signed Morata in July 2017 to lead the line for the reigning Premier League champions.⁵ Conte has also coached Eden Hazard, Andrea Pirlo and Harry Kane, so one season under him buys very little on this list.

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Diego Simeone's forward, on a list with Falcao and Oblak

Morata played for Diego Simeone in two separate stints, which AC Milan's profile totalled at five and a half years attached to Atlético.³ Radamel Falcao, Antoine Griezmann, Diego Godín and Jan Oblak are on the same list of Simeone's players, and Morata's case here rests on length of service rather than on any one season.

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Seven clubs, four countries: Real Madrid to Como

The travel ranking is the one Morata's career was built for without ever intending to be. Which elite striker has moved the most? Zlatan Ibrahimović is the name it sets against him.

Count the senior clubs and the total is seven, in four countries: Real Madrid, Juventus, Chelsea, Atlético Madrid, Milan, Galatasaray and Como.⁴

Galatasaray is the spell people forget. Milan lent him to Istanbul in February 2025 for a €6 million fee, with an €8 million option to keep him.¹¹ He came away with a Turkish league title, and Como then took him on loan with an obligation to buy.⁴

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Chelsea's ledger: 24 goals in 72 games

The unflattering one. This ranking collects the Premier League's biggest transfer misjudgements, and Morata is on it beside Paul Pogba.

Chelsea supplied the evidence themselves. Their farewell note counts 24 goals in 72 appearances across two years, and ends on his last goal for the club, in an FA Cup third-round win over Nottingham Forest.⁶

The counter-case is the first four months. Morata scored on his Premier League debut off the bench against Burnley, headed goals in three of his first four league games, put three past Stoke City in a 4-0 win at the end of September, and reached 12 by the turn of the year.⁶

Morata's 2018 opened with injury problems, Olivier Giroud arrived in January to share the striking duties, and Maurizio Sarri later preferred Eden Hazard through the middle.⁶ A striker can be a bad signing and a good player in the same two seasons.

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The overrated list, against Morata's trophy cabinet

The most awkward ranking here asks who football has overrated, and Morata has been a fixture of that conversation for ten years — Harry Kane is in the same field.

The cabinet is the reply. Como's announcement when he signed counted two Champions League titles, a UEFA Super Cup, a FIFA Club World Cup, two Serie A titles, two La Liga titles and a Turkish championship, with a Coppa Italia, an FA Cup and a Europa League behind them.⁴

The case for the label is that the biggest clubs kept moving him on. Real Madrid sold Morata twice, in 2014 and again in 2017,⁷⁵ and Milan lent him to Turkey seven months after signing him.¹¹

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Luis de la Fuente named 26 and Morata was not one

The last ranking is a register of absences: the best players missing from the 2026 World Cup, with Morata alongside Robert Lewandowski.

Morata's omission was total. De la Fuente announced 26 names on 25 May 2026, with Mikel Oyarzabal, Ferran Torres and Borja Iglesias among the forwards, and Morata was not in the squad at all.²

Morata's 2025/26 season at Como produced one clear moment, and it came off the bench at the Stadio Artemio Franchi in January. On in the 86th minute, scoring in the 90th, sending Como to their first Coppa Italia quarter-final in forty years.¹²

Age is the plainest reading. Morata was born in October 1992,³ and the two 19-year-olds who played in that World Cup final, Lamine Yamal and Pau Cubarsí, were not born when he joined his first academy.¹

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Morata collected the medals and kept the doubt

Morata's honours and Morata's failures sit on the same page here, filed under different questions. He won what his clubs won, and was still the forward each of them eventually replaced.

Every ranking above works one pair at a time, so forming a view on any of them takes about a minute.

If one of these lists puts Morata in company you would not have picked, build the version you would have made instead.

More rankings, more angles

• How Many Ways Can You Rank Ferran Torres? — the forward who took the shirt and the trophy
• Where Does Rodri Actually Rank? — Morata's Euro 2024 teammate, measured again
• Kylian Mbappé Is on Every List, Never in the Same Place — a striker nobody calls overrated