Seven versions of greatness and the Ballon d'Or's impossible choice

The hardest Ballon d’Or votes are not the years when nobody has been great enough. It is the year when defining greatness becomes a challenge.

Harry Kane scored 73 goals for club and country.

Kylian Mbappe finished as top scorer in La Liga, the Champions League and the World Cup.

Lamine Yamal was named La Liga’s best player and then became a world champion with Spain.

Rodri was officially the best player at that World Cup.

Khvicha Kvaratskhelia was officially the best player in the Champions League. Current incumbent Ousmane Dembele also played a key role there.

And finally, Lionel Messi, at 39, won the MLS Cup, was named its MVP, then dragged Argentina to another World Cup final while scoring eight goals and finishing as the tournament’s Silver Ball winner.

One Ballon d’Or. Seven completely different arguments.

That makes the 2026 Ballon d’Or less a referendum on one footballer than on the award itself. France Football says the criteria are applied in order: first, individual performance and decisive, impressive character; then collective performance and trophies; then class and fair play. The voting period runs from 3 August 2025 through to the end of the World Cup on 19 July 2026.

It all sounds straightforward on paper, but wait until you hear the arguments.

How many goals are enough?

Harry Kane’s case writes itself, with the statistics almost looking unreal. Seventy-three goals for Bayern Munich and England across the season. Sixty-one came for Bayern.

He won the European Golden Shoe, helped deliver the Bundesliga and DFB-Pokal double, scored 14 times in the Champions League and then added another six at the World Cup as England finished third.

Nobody had produced a greater club-and-country total in a season since Lionel Messi scored 82 in 2011-12. The fact that he is not a runaway winner almost feels unfair.

What else was he supposed to do?

For years, the Ballon d’Or has been criticised whenever trophies appear to outweigh the individual. Yet France Football’s own rules explicitly put individual performance first.

If those words matter, Kane’s season has to matter enormously. The argument made against the Englishman stems from what he could not do.

Kane did not win the Champions League. England did not win the World Cup. Ballon d’Or history has taught us that 70 goals can somehow feel lighter than one unforgettable night in a final.

It is not necessarily fair, but it is how the award has been decided in the past.

Can the best individual season survive an empty trophy cabinet?

Enter Kylian Mbappe. He makes this argument of individual seasons versus collective trophies even more uncomfortable.

He scored 25 times in La Liga. He scored 15 times in only 11 Champions League appearances, finishing as the competition’s top scorer. Then he went to the World Cup and scored 10 more, winning the Golden Boot and taking his career total at the tournament to 22.

Irrespective of the jersey he wore, he always scored goals. Yet Real Madrid finished without a major trophy. France lost to Spain in the World Cup semi-final.

Mbappe himself has leaned directly into the contradiction, arguing that the Ballon d’Or is an individual award and that team failure should not overshadow personal excellence. To his credit, he has a point.

If the best individual player in the world can dominate three different scoring competitions and still lose because other teams won more trophies, at some stage we have to ask whether the Ballon d’Or really rewards an individual at all.

Mbappe’s candidacy this year is effectively a stress test for the award’s own rules.

How do you measure a player whose impact is beyond numbers?

Lamine Yamal’s argument is completely different. He does not need 73 goals. Barcelona retained La Liga and Lamine was named the competition’s Player of the Season.

Then Spain won the World Cup with him as one of the defining attackers of the tournament. The temptation is to mention that he did it all as a teenager.

That should not decide anything. Age is not a Ballon d’Or criterion. There is a reason the Golden Boy award exists.

Lamine’s influence, taking his man on, creating chances for his team-mates and bringing a sense of electricity to the flank, is harder to quantify against Kane’s 73 or Mbappe’s scoring exploits.

That does not mean he lacks the numbers. Barcelona’s winger finished the league season with 16 goals and 12 assists and ended the campaign with 24 goals and 17 assists in all competitions despite missing time through injury.

His case is that the best footballer does not always need to be the one who puts up the highest numbers.

Does the biggest month outweigh the other eleven?

Rodri may have the most traditional World Cup-year argument.

Spain won the tournament. FIFA named him its best player. He played all eight matches as La Roja conceded only once and their control in midfield repeatedly flowed through him.

No candidate owns a more prestigious individual award from the season than the World Cup Golden Ball.

This creates another problem for the voters. How much is one tournament worth? The World Cup occupies only a few weeks of a football season, but it carries a weight no other competition can reproduce. Entire careers are remembered differently because of seven or eight matches played every four years. Just ask Ferran Torres.

Rodri did not have Kane’s numbers. He did not score like Mbappe. He did not create the same excitement as Lamine. He did not even particularly have a great club season with Manchester City. What he did was become the central midfielder around whom the world champions built their tournament.

The 30-year-old has done it before, but it is safe to say that his chances of lifting the trophy for a second time are infinitesimally small.

Are the Champions League nights still the ultimate test?

PSG have two serious Ballon d’Or cases of their own.

Ousmane Dembele remains one of the defining players of Luis Enrique’s side. He scored eight times in the Champions League, including the equalising penalty in the final against Arsenal, and produced some of PSG’s most explosive knockout performances.

However, if we are judging PSG’s season itself, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia has the stronger case.

He scored 10 Champions League goals and added six assists in 16 appearances. He delivered two goals in that extraordinary 5-4 semi-final win over Bayern, won the penalty for PSG’s equaliser in the final and became the first player to score or assist in seven consecutive knockout matches in a single Champions League campaign. UEFA ultimately named him the competition’s Player of the Season.

Dembele may still be the more recognisable symbol of Luis Enrique’s PSG and the more established Ballon d’Or name. This time, however, Khvicha owned more of the season.

That does not remove Dembele from the Ballon d’Or conversation. However, it creates an awkward problem for both of them.

The more voters who see PSG’s season as deserving of individual recognition, the more those votes risk being divided between two team-mates. Some will prioritise Dembele’s status, explosiveness and broader influence on Luis Enrique’s system. Others will look at Khvicha’s superior Champions League output and UEFA’s Player of the Season award.

Sometimes two compelling cases from the same team do not strengthen one another. They cancel each other out just enough for somebody else to win.

And then Messi walks into the room

Every Ballon d’Or discussion eventually seems to find its way back to him. This time, though, nostalgia alone cannot explain the nomination.

Messi produced 29 goals and 19 assists in 28 regular-season MLS matches in 2025, won the league’s Golden Boot and became the first player to claim consecutive MVP awards in the tournament. He then took Inter Miami to their first MLS Cup, providing two assists in the final and being named MLS Cup MVP.

Then came the World Cup. Eight goals. Four assists. A place in the final. The Silver Boot. The Silver Ball as the tournament’s second-best player. All this at 39.

Messi’s case forces the jury into perhaps the most awkward discussion. How much should the strength of the league matter?

If the same player produces dominant numbers in MLS, wins its championship, then proves at the World Cup that those performances were not simply a product of weaker opposition, how heavily should voters discount the club campaign?

Messi was not playing Champions League football. Kane, Mbappe, Khvicha, Rodri and Lamine were operating through far more demanding European club seasons. That has to count.

However, Messi then reached the biggest final in football and finished second to Rodri for the tournament’s Golden Ball. Dismiss him because of MLS, and the World Cup makes it look lazy.

Place him above Kane or Mbappe, and the weekly level of competition becomes impossible to ignore.

Even at 39, Messi has somehow managed to become another argument about what the Ballon d’Or actually values.

One vote, seven definitions of greatness

On 26 October, the winner will be announced in London.

Irrespective of who wins the award, people will start arguing. Because the most interesting thing about this Ballon d’Or may not ultimately be who wins it. It may be what the result reveals about football’s greatest individual prize.

If Kane wins, volume has triumphed.

If Mbappe wins, the individual has finally been separated from the team.

If Lamine wins, individual brilliance and collective success have found the perfect middle ground.

If Rodri wins, the World Cup still bends the sport around itself.

If Khvicha wins, Europe remains the ultimate club stage.

If Messi somehow wins a ninth, the sport will have decided that greatness can survive age, geography and almost every normal rule of decline.

Seven footballers. Seven completely different seasons. One Ballon d’Or.