The two multiple winners are not on this year’s shortlist, and a new name on the old trophy can only help to restore respect for this historic award
The Ballon d’Or, football’s most famous individual prize, was not always the gold-plated standard for tedium it has become during the past 16 years. From 1990, 17 different players won the award over the next 18 years, with victors hailing from not only Brazil, Germany, France and Italy but also Ukraine, Liberia, Bulgaria and even England.
But if the names from the 1990s hit like a wave of nostalgia – Van Basten! Baggio! Stoichkov! Weah! Ronaldo! Rivaldo! – the list from 2008 onwards is crushingly repetitive. Cristiano Ronaldo won his first gong that year, Lionel Messi succeeded him, and what was once a fun way to spotlight a great player – or at least an outstanding 12 months – turned into a proxy war for social media’s most overplayed debate. Messi and Ronaldo hoovered up 13 of 15 awards from 2008-2023, a duopoly driven by the players’ relentless brilliance but also powered by the marketing machines of Adidas and Nike, as well as political in-voting.
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