The players who should have won a Ballon d’Or: Our top 10

There’s a huge pool of players who should have won a Ballon d'Or, but in some cases, we are talking about daylight robbery. Here are some of the more contentious calls in the coveted award’s history.

With human opinion rather than solid results being the method by which Ballon d’Or winners are crowned, it stands to reason that more popular players have a better chance. Even since its very birth in 1956 – before the age of mega wages and stardom – attacking players and goalscorers have been favoured when it comes to choosing a winner.

So what about those men beaten out for the award? Here’s our top 10 of wronged Ballon d’Or nominees…

Top 10 Players who should have won the Ballon d’Or

Kenny Dalglish, 1983 – Liverpool 

In 1982/83, Liverpool won a domestic double and once again lifted the European Cup a season later. Liverpool forward Kenny Dalglish was the driving force in those Liverpool teams and the best player in England in the early 1980s. In spite of his brilliance at Anfield, Dalglish never won the Ballon d’Or. His best finish came in 1983 as runner-up to Juventus’ Michel Platini.

Platini had moved to Juventus in the summer of 1982 from Saint-Etienne. He scored 28 goals in 48 games across all competitions. The forward’s only trophy with the Bianconeri was the 1982/83 Coppa Italia. Juventus were also European Cup runners-up.

Platini’s choice as winner was a shock, as would be his Ballon d’Or wins in each of the next two years. The Frenchman was a great player, but it is debatable that he was the best European player over the course of all three years.

Eric Cantona, 1993 – Manchester United 

Manchester United wouldn't have become the club they did in the 1990s without Frenchman Eric Cantona. Cantona joined the Red Devils in November 1992, and they lost just twice more in the league after his signing, sealing a first league title in 26 years the following May.

Prior to that, Cantona had won Ligue 1 with Marseille in 1990/91 and the English First Division with Leeds United in 1991/92, making the inaugural Premier League campaign of all time his third straight title-winning season on a personal level.

However, that still wasn’t enough, with Roberto Baggio claiming the Ballon d’Or after winning the UEFA Cup with Juventus – despite the Bianconeri only finishing fourth in 1992/93.

Paolo Maldini, 1994 – AC Milan

In 1994, AC Milan defender Paolo Maldini was at the top of his game, victorious in the Champions League final after his side’s 4-0 humbling of a star-strewn Barcelona side, and a World Cup runner up only by virtue of a lost penalty shootout.

By this point, the Italian was already 10 years into his career with the Rossoneri, and still had 15 to go, with plenty of additional domestic and European success to come. However, he never really got the recognition he deserved, being a defender who did an unglamorous job.

He finished third in the 1994 Ballon d’Or voting, with the award instead going to Barcelona forward Hristo Stoichkov. Granted, the Bulgarian had netted 24 times in the club’s successful La Liga title campaign, before proving a force in his nation’s unexpected run to fourth place in that year’s World Cup.

If judged by pure silverware, however, 1993/94 Serie A and Champions League winner Maldini would have been the better choice.

Raul, 2001 – Real Madrid

The forward scored 323 career goals for Real Madrid, but never really got the respect outside the capital that he deserved. In addition, Real Madrid tossed Raul to the side once Cristiano Ronaldo arrived at the Santiago Bernabeu. The forward’s records soon crumbled thanks to Ronaldo’s goalscoring exploits.

The 2000/01 campaign was Raul’s seventh season at the club, and the third in a row to see him net 29 or more goals for Real Madrid. But the award instead went to Liverpool striker Michael Owen – a player Real Madrid would sign just a few years later – ending a 22-year wait for an English Ballon d’Or winner.

Owen led the Reds to a treble of trophies in 2001 (the UEFA Cup, League Cup and FA Cup) and bagged a sensational hat-trick for England in their famous 5-1 win against Germany in the September of that year, which helped put the Three Lions halfway through the qualification door for the 2002 World Cup.

Regardless, critics have cited voting politics as a big influence on Owen winning the award. Given how frequently Real Madrid players have won the award in recent years, Raul would surely have a chance if he emulated the numbers of his prime years today.

Thierry Henry, 2004 – Arsenal 

Thierry Henry was the best forward on one of the best teams in the world in the early 2000s. But in spite of the success Henry found on the football pitch, with 30 goals in Arsenal’s Invincibles title-winning season of 2003/04, he wasn't even voted into the top three.

The 2004 award instead went to AC Milan’s Andriy Schevchenko, with Barcelona duo Deco and Ronaldinho coming second and third respectively. Henry finished fourth, with Arsenal’s quarter-final exit from the Champions League considered a factor in the final vote.

Samuel Eto’o, 2006 – Barcelona 

Samuel Eto’o was an electric player in his prime. He had incredible pace, power, and accuracy that few others in the game possessed in the mid-2000s. Barcelona fans and pundits can talk about Ronaldinho, Lionel Messi, and Pep Guardiola being the catalysts to Barcelona’s dominance, but Eto’o is the man that inspired it.

The forward was brilliant in the 2005/06 season scoring 26 goals in La Liga and powering Barcelona to the title. He also led the Blaugrana to the Champions League trophy, netting the equaliser against Arsenal in a famous comeback victory.

In a shock development, a defender would trump a striker in the Ballon d’Or race of 2006, which was won by Real Madrid centre-back Fabio Cannavaro. Although the Real Madrid defender was unable to lead his side to a La Liga trophy or Champions League final, he did win the 2006 FIFA World Cup as captain of Italy.

Eto’o finished an unremarkable sixth – more evidence that African players were (and perhaps still are) overlooked by voters. Gianluigi Buffon and Henry finished second and third, respectively in voting.

Xavi, 2010 – Barcelona 

The modern Ballon d’Or didn’t come into existence until 2010. The award was combined with the FIFA Player of the Year, allowing players from all nationalities playing in all corners of the globe to win the trophy. But that didn’t really interrupt the status quo, with only one club on the lips of voters in the year that Spain lifted the World Cup, thanks much to Barcelona’s dream duo Xavi and Andres Iniesta.

It was Xavi who many were tipping to lift the award, and end a wait of 50 years for a Spanish player to do so. However, he had the misfortune of playing in that Barcelona team with Messi, who stole all the glory through his exploits up front, overshadowing the tireless engine room work from Barcelona’s midfield.

Xavi finished third in three consecutive years between 2009 and 2011, despite being the heartbeat of Barcelona’s dream team. His passing and ball control was the reason Messi could get forward and score goals, which only adds to the frustrations some Spanish voters may feel until their country’s Ballon d’Or curse finally ends.

Antoine Griezmann, 2018 – Atletico Madrid

Griezmann made a strong case for being Ballon d’Or winner. He scored 29 goals in all competitions for Atletico Madrid leading the club to the Europa League trophy. He also helped Los Colchoneros win the UEFA Super Cup. If that wasn’t enough, Griezmann won the FIFA World Cup with France – unlike Luka Modric, who was a runner up with Croatia.

Yet it was Modric who won the award, lending further credence to the argument that players from Real Madrid and Barcelona get preferential treatment. So too does Ronaldo’s second-placed finish ahead of Griezmann.

Virgil van Dijk, 2019 – Liverpool

The belief that Barcelona and Real Madrid are given preferential treatment is backed up best by numbers though, with the two rivals producing winners on 23 occasions combined. Eleven of those came consecutively between 2009 and 2019.

The last of the years in that trend produced by far the closest call, with just seven voting points separating the top two.

Van Dijk was not only the best defender in the world in 2018/19, but he transformed a Liverpool team helping them to qualify for two straight Champions League finals. They won that season’s edition of the tournament, embarrassing Messi and Barcelona along the way when producing the greatest comeback in Champions League history.

Messi did win La Liga with Barcelona, as Real Madrid failed to put up a fight in the immediate post-Ronaldo era. However, Barcelona lost the Copa del Rey Final to Valencia in shocking fashion. Regardless of the goals scored by Messi, he wasn’t the most important player to his side nor the best player in Europe.

Robert Lewandowski, 2021 – Bayern Munich

After the COVID pandemic put paid to any chances of the award being given in 2020, the following year saw Real Madrid and Barcelona’s dominant streak end – though not for the right reasons from the perspective of voters craving a change from Messi-mania.

Predictably, the Argentine maestro was onstage again, collecting his seventh of eight awards to date at the expense of Robert Lewandowski, who had just broken Gerd Muller’s Bundesliga scoring record. His 41st and final goal of the season had arrived on the last matchday of the campaign, putting the top hat on a two-year period that had seen Bayern Munich win the Champions League and claim successive Bundesliga titles by a 13-point margin.

Unbelievably, this was one year that Messi didn’t clinch the Ligue 1 title, with Lille emerging as shock champions in 2020/21. But the emotive quality of his first-ever international trophy with Argentina (the 2021 Copa America) won the day.

Summary of players that should have won the Ballon d’Or

We’re not quite done yet though, as we end with the question that we feel some people taking this trip down (sour?) memory lane will have inwardly been asking…

Why did Pele and Diego Maradona never win the Ballon d’Or?

Initially, only European players were eligible for the Ballon d’Or, with that rule being dropped only in 1995, though the players still had to be based at clubs in Europe. As such, Pele was never eligible for a Ballon d’Or trophy, while Diego Maradona – way past his best and just a year on from his expulsion at the 1994 World Cup in any case – had left Europe by then.

Even if the pre-1995 rule had been dropped while both men were in their respective primes, it’s unlikely that journalists outside of South America may have voted for Pele, given that he never played in Europe, spending practically his entire career at Santos before one last payday with the New York Cosmos.

Diego Maradona undoubtedly would have won the award in the latter half of the 1980s, for his World Cup-winning exploits in 1986 and successive Serie A titles (with a UEFA Cup triumph) to follow.

Will a Spaniard win the Ballon d’Or in 2024?: Our prediction

With Xavi’s chances long dead and gone, the likeliest candidate from Spain is a player very much in the same mould, namely Rodri, a midfield metronome who won the Premier League title with Man City and Euro 2024 with Spain. But it still seems improbable that he’ll do anything better than a 2nd place finish.

However, he’s out of action after a season-ending injury suffered against Arsenal on 22nd September, which can only affect his chances for the worse. There’s also the heavy presence of Real Madrid players to consider in the running, since they represent a club with a far longer history of success than Man City.

Rodri’s fellow Euro 2024 winner Dani Carvajal is another contender, but he is easily overshadowed by the likes of Vinicius Jr and Jude Bellingham, who operate much further up the field and seem to have more star quality off the pitch as well as on it.