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Well it's an opinion that exist outside of this board & on a global scale whether you like it or not

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It's mostly an American opinion, where people get crowned "world champions" even though a few countries play its sports.

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Didn't Messi say that the game "owed" him a World Cup??

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Nah Sampaoli, his coach did.

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As amazing as Cruyff was he isn't in the Pele & Maradona discussion solely for his lack of a title with the Netherlands.

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One, he's been regarded as the best player of the 70s, which sandwiches Pele's and Maradona's eras. And his legacy is far bigger, as he introduced the Rinus Michaels style to Barcelona. I think part of Pele's and Maradona's dominance is the visibility of the Brazil-Argentina rivalry. Yet, it makes no sense to hold Cruyff above a player like Beckenbauer, if titles are the deciding factor. The inconsistency is crazy. Attacking players are over-represented too. Beckenbauer is punished, essentially, for not having been an attacking player, despite being as important a player as any of the three mentioned above, as well as just as revolutionary. Here are four examples of lists so we can have some context.
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1 of these rates Cruyff above Pele and Maradona, and has solid reasons for doing so.

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Same reason why you hardly ever hear about Best & Di Stefano. Neither could even make it to a World Cup.

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You have to be kidding me. Best and Di Stefano regularly make such lists. Zico makes these lists, even though he never won anything. And bringing up Di Stefano, for example, played for 3 nations and never played in a WC because the two teams he played for in the fifties, Argentina and Colombia. Argentina withdrew from the '50 WC and didn't even try to qualify for the '54 WC. Colombia withdrew from the '50 WC and was banned from the '54 WC. He was 32 by the time the '58 WC happened, but Spain didn't qualify. How in the hell should this be held against Di Stefano? It doesn't make any sense. Furthermore, the first five years of his career, there was no WC held at all, meaning he had no chance until '58.

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Funny you bring up Kahn but everytime people talk about the greatest goalies of this era he isn't at the top.

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He was generally regarded as among best of his era, along with Schmeichel. LINK

His battle with Lehman had as much to do with Klinsmann wanting to cement his reputation as a risk-taker as it was about Kahn losing his spot. Kahn did win the Euros with Germany though, but somehow that's less than Barthez in these measures, even though he was regarded as a better keeper than Barthez.

The biggest problem with the view that WC's should count is two-fold. First it favors the bigger nations who can actually win the WC. Only 8 nations have won it. Does that mean only players from those 8 nations can be regarded as the best?

Secondly, the WC before 1982 was a completely different tournament, and the modern iteration that arose in 1998 is much harder to win than those earlier tournaments. Given how much the game has changed with the change in the off-side rule in 2005, it's gotten even more difficult.