The annual Ballon d'Or debate has been dominated by noise this year, as many media outlets have aggressively marketed the idea that raw, uncontextualised goals are the most important metric. France Football's official voting mandate for journalists tells a different story.
Voters are instructed to assess three separate criteria, listed below, when casting their ballots. How these rules interact with the current crop of candidates explains why the goals fetishism and manufactured drama from the media machine surrounding this year's potential winner fail to tell the whole story.
I have outlined the three official rules that voters are required to consider below, and discussed why ignoring any of them would result in a less than ideal choice for the award.
1. Individual performance and decisive moments
The first criterion emphasizes the player's "performance", including "important" and "decisive" moments.
I believe that voters should interpret this rule to value players' contributions to important and decisive moments in their club and national team matches. The Ballon d'Or was never meant to reward players for scoring hundreds of meaningless league goals in an easy domestic league, or for starring in uncompetitive matches in a weak domestic league or competition.
The award was always intended to recognize and reward the players who take over in the biggest matches, and act as the catalysts for their teams' successes in the UEFA Champions League, domestic derbies, and international tournaments such as the World Cup. A player with 40 league goals, but who rarely plays important minutes or rarely scores in important matches would be a poor choice for the award, as they would fail this rule.
2. Team success and the player's importance
The second criterion emphasizes the trophies and achievements attained by the player's team(s), and their role in achieving them.
In years past, I think it is fair to say that players who had objectively outstanding numbers were unfairly snubbed from contention for the Ballon d'Or due to this rule, as they either failed to make it to the UEFA Champions League semifinals or beyond with their club teams, or failed to deliver at the international level in major tournaments such as the FIFA World Cup, UEFA European Championship, or CONCACAF Gold Cup. However, whenever a media outlet desires to nominate a candidate with no major trophies or silverware at either the club or international levels, they will attempt to argue that the player should receive the award anyway. Nominate a candidate who failed to make it past the Round of 16 in the Champions League or FIFA World Cup, or who won no trophies at the club level, and it would be impossible to uphold this rule without ignoring the obvious: a player's performance in a match matters far more than whether the match was competitive, if it took place in an important competition, or if that competition is even considered a "major" one by the media.
3. Fair play and class on the pitch
The final criteria emphasizes the player's general behaviour and attitude in the game.
While many media pundits will pretend that this is an afterthought, this is an official consideration for voters. This criteria is meant to judge a player's sportsmanship and fair play in the game, including their attitude towards officials, opponents, and fans. Players' temper tantrums, diving, and general willingness to bend the rules should be taken into account when evaluating their game.
Verdict
If the journalists voting on this award stick strictly to the rulebook, prioritising decisive moments over empty stats, major trophies over zero-silverware seasons, and elite sportsmanship over PR hype, the genuine, deserving winner becomes clear. The question is whether the voters will respect the criteria or let the media narratives dictate history once again.
Lamine Yamal was the most decisive individual player, he secured the two biggest trophies available to him, and he did it all with pure class. The other two names that meet the standard are Lionel Messi who at 39 years-old still proved himself in the grandest stage of football, and Harry Kane who had a great personal and domestic success with Bayern Munich.
Add us as a preferred source on Google