2 weeks Ago By George-simms
Depending on who you ask, the men’s Ballon d’Or has either never been so important or so pointless. On one hand, there’s the argument that in a post- Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo era, in the long and laborious hangover of 15 years drunk on their statistical and actual brilliance, the Ballon d’Or has lost any sense of meaning. We’ve seen the face of football god and basked in it.
On the other side of Eden everyone else appears something of a pale imitation. Yes, this lot might be good, but they won’t be as good as those other ones, so who really cares? Read Next Wolves' anger at VAR masks what is really happening at the club On the flipside, there’s the deeper idea that for the 68 years of its existence until now, the Ballon d’Or has been something of an anachronism, not fitting with the wider ethos of team sport, rewarding individuals who entirely depended on fellow players for their success. Of course that’s still true, but what’s changed is how we – particularly younger generations – consume and comprehend football.
Children now support players over teams, swapping allegiances with the follies of the transfer system. The superstar has never held such power and the individual has never mattered more off the pitch. To be a professional footballer is to be a brand whether you like it or not, a walking, occasionally talking, billboard and canvas for parasocial projections.
So with this all in mind, the Ballon d’Or has become a fundamental part of the footballing discourse. Whether it is to anoint the next Messi and Ronaldo or just praise and pray to your sporting deity, people care. And this year’s race – which will be decided in Paris on Monday – remains open.
It’s worth noting this is for the 2023-24 season, rather than the 2024 calendar year, so anything from August 2023 to July 2024. There are three obvious candidates and a host of longer shots, from Dani Carvajal (lots of trophies, much less individual brilliance) to Lamine Yamal (there should be laws against a 17-year-old winning). We’ve analysed what we believe are the six strongest contenders in this year’s 30-man race, in no small part because they’re also probably the best six players in the world.
So without further ado...
Six main contenders for the 2024 Ballon d’Or Erling Haaland This is unlikely to be Haaland’s year but that doesn’t mean he’s entirely out of contention. He remains the premier goalscorer in world football playing for its best team, the Premier League top scorer in consecutive seasons at just 24. Scoring 103 goals in 110 games is generational form.
Yet he struggled in the Champions League knockout stage as Manchester City slipped out in the quarter-finals, while he also wasn’t at his best in the FA Cup final. You assume that, given Norway haven’t qualified for a major men’s tournament since Euro 2000, he will need more trophies and a summer without international football to win this award. Given 2025 is the Club World Cup in the USA and City have started well, that fits the bill perfectly.
Harry Kane Read Next England fans forgot the golden rule - never write off Harry Kane There’s no questioning that there were days and weeks in the 2023-24 season that Kane was the best player in the world. In one three-game Bundesliga stretch last season, he scored eight goals and managed an assist, form which eventually earned him the European Golden Shoe with 36 league goals in 32 games. But of course, as has been the case for Herr Kane throughout his career, he is doomed by his lack of trophies.
He spent 2023-24 as the best player in Bayern Munich’s least successful team in over a decade, the poster boy of the depression. His underperformance during Euro 2024 won’t help either, whatever caused it. Yet had England made it over the line and Bayer Leverkusen didn’t produce a previously unimaginable invincible season, it would be very hard to prise football’s biggest individual award out of Kane’s grasp.
Kylian Mbappe It has long appeared inevitable that Mbappe would be Messi’s and Ronaldo’s successor in dominating this award, yet that doesn’t seem likely to be the case. PSG’s semi-final Champions League exit and France’s Euros departure – with Mbappe hindered by a broken nose – has shifted the narrative in what was otherwise a genuinely remarkable season. The 25-year-old won Ligue 1, the Coupe de France and the French Super Cup (Trophee des Champions), and was also named league player of the year.
He was top scorer in Ligue 1, joint-top scorer in the Champions League – including five knockout goals – and scored in every round bar the final of the Coupe de France, alongside the Trophee des Champions final. There’s a sense we’ve become numb to Mbappe’s brilliance before he’s ever been fairly rewarded for it, that everyone assumes only exceptional is acceptable and only the very best silverware will do. On the numbers alone, he should be higher up in this conversation and you have to question whether an unbroken nose might have changed the narrative in his favour.
Jude Bellingham Read Next England's next manager has to harness Jude Bellingham's main character energy There was a time when Bellingham was the favourite for this award, leading La Liga’s Golden Boot race (he finished joint-third) as Real Madrid’s revelatory false nine. There was nothing he couldn’t do, the Galacticos’ Galactico, sent by heavenly narrative to win England the Euros. He scored in his first four Champions League games at his new club and bagged added-time winners in home and away Clasicos .
He assisted goals in the victorious Champions League and Spanish Super Cup finals. He became the most marketable footballer on the planet. At Euro 2024, he produced one of the great buzzer beaters in international football and set up a goal in the final.
And yet he’s now holding on to the chasing pack by a thread, largely due to the lingering impact of England’s joy-sapping Euros run and a poor start to 2024-25, which shouldn’t be considered but inevitably is. Vinicius Junior (we’ll get on to him) is seemingly Real Madrid’s chosen nominee as the goalscorer in the Champions League final, but it’s hard to see what else he did markedly better than Bellingham over any consistent period. Vinicius Junior That will give you something of a taste of how I feel about the push for Vinicius to win the Ballon d’Or.
I don’t really get it. He’s a good player. He scores big goals.
He scores a fair few of them. As anyone who watched him score a second-half hat-trick against Borussia Dortmund can attest, he can be destructively brilliant. But is he a better player than Mbappe in the same position, even if he had a better season in terms of silverware? Does he have Kane’s or Rodri’s technical ability or Haaland’s singular goalscoring ability? He would be an underwhelming winner at best, seemingly crowned on the basis of scoring the second goal in a 2-0 Champions League final.
His international record is bizarrely poor, just five goals in 35 games, and his Brazil side were knocked out of this summer’s Copa America by Uruguay having won only one group game. His La Liga record last season – 15 goals in 26 games – was strong but not uniquely so. The ability to be at your best under intense pressure is a great one but it doesn’t make a complete player.
In an award still judged on statistical dominance in attacking roles, Vinicius hasn’t been exceptional enough to earn the title of best footballer in the world. Top two, where he will likely end up, is flattery enough. Rodri And then there was one, and that’s the way this race should be.
No other player has quite such daylight between them and their peers in any position, or quite such an impact on one of the best teams in the world. Rodri is a defensive midfielder without parallel in modern football and the recent addition of crucial goals only enhances that. He scored just shy of a goal every five games last season (nine in 50), and that’s not even what he’s good at.
A Premier League winner and Player of the Tournament at Euro 2024 in the winning side, it is somehow held against him that he went off injured with Spain 1-0 up and utterly dominant. Not reaching the Champions League final – which he’d scored the winning goal in the season prior – is a legitimate negative, but that certainly wasn’t his fault. Rodri hasn’t lost in 52 Premier League games, while Manchester City lost three of the four league matches he missed last season, while he also sat out of the Carabao Cup loss to Newcastle.
He is the most complete, most impactful and most intelligent footballer currently playing and should be rewarded as such. It is reflective of football as a game that the individual who is most important to the best team should win this award. In 2023-24, that was Rodri.
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