Spain's dominance of world football will be on full display this week when the shortlist for this year's men's Ballon d'Or is announced, which will be bathed in 24-carat gold at the end of October when the winner is announced in Paris. The winner, and most of the top five, will either be Spanish or play for their La Liga club.
Whether by nationality or training, by nature or by nurture, Spanish football is the cradle of all that is exciting, intelligent, stimulating and ultimately victorious in world football. And it has been that way for decades. Yeah, boo, it stinks of the Premier League… it's going to be official.
The first two will be Vinícius Júnior and Rodri, while next in line should be Jude Bellingham, Dani Carvajal, Toni Kroos and Lamine Yamal. A mix of players who either grew up with a Spanish-style formation (possessing the ball, doing intelligent things with it, repeating ad infinitum) or who needed to move to LaLiga to thrive and be recognised accordingly.
Following a recent change introduced by the French organisers of the Ballon d'Or, the judges (football journalists appointed by FIFA's top 100 nations) will have to consider only the 2023-24 season. The criteria sent to those venerable voters make for interesting reading, however; for example, there is no explicit mention of trophies won.
The organisers (a combination of L'Equipe, France Football and UEFA) want those 100 journalists to take these factors into account when voting for their top five players:
1. Individual performance, determination and ability to impress
2. Collective performance and trajectory
3. Class and fair play
I'm going to declare my colours here (although I don't have a vote). I won't complain about whether Rodri or Vinícius wins, it will be one or the other.
My personal choice, by far, would be Rodri. He is by far the most complete player in any position anywhere in the world. And that is proven not only by the statistics (74 games without losing a 90-minute game for Manchester City between February 2023 and May 2024), an endless stream of Premier League titles, two consecutive international trophies for Spain over the past year, but also by his exceptional footballing intelligence. Leadership, goals, inexhaustible stamina, vision, technical excellence, aerial ability, eloquence – Rodrigo Hernández has it all.
But, like teen sensation Yamal, who I'll discuss in a moment, I suspect Rodri might simply be one of the “victims” of this process, and I'll feel heartbroken for both of them if he is.
The reason is that players in Rodri's position almost never win this award. And players who rush forward, excite, invent, mark, create and scare defenders, as Vinícius does repeatedly, almost always get it.
Since the Ballon d'Or was invented in 1956, there have been 45 winners from 20 different countries. Only two, Matthias Sammer and Lothar Matthäus, played a role remotely similar to Rodri's. Sammer was the last of those two imperious and ferocious German midfielders to win this trophy, and that was 28 years ago.
Meanwhile, the case for Vinícius is obvious. And while the Ballon d'Or will be awarded for his 10 months starting in August 2023, anyone who has read my columns here about the Brazilian striker over the past five years knows how much I adore this man who is bottled magic.
If “track record” is a criterion to be taken into account when voting, Vinícius has it: 12 major titles at just 24 years old, plus a 100% goal-scoring record and wins in two Champions League finals. And, given that the player who finds himself on this podium should not do so solely because of the trophies won in the previous season, Vinícius is likely to have the edge over Rodri.
For nearly two decades, the Ballon d'Or was dominated by Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, because they stand out from all but four or five other men in the entire history of the sport. But now that neither of them will win it again, we are entering an era where your football will probably need to be “trimmed” to add sparkle to your season. By this I mean that all that glitters will be gold.
It's much easier for fans and analysts of all ages and experiences, TV producers, social media fanatics and (heck, let's face it) journalists or editors to take a clip of a skill, an assist, a goal and broadcast it or post it online and watch it go global – viral being the clumsiest, ugliest word for it.
The kind of brilliance that Rodri embodies – qualities that still command the highest transfer fees, the highest wages and a monstrous calibre that will continue to deliver trophies to players like him and their clubs for as long as football exists – is a little harder to showcase in a ten-second clip. How much does he care about that? Very little, I imagine.
I spent half an hour with Rodri during Euro 2024, interviewing him for a UEFA masterclass video. He is a man who perfectly understands his position, his role, his own qualities, his learning process under City manager Pep Guardiola, his chances of continuing to win major trophies. He is lucky not only to be able to impose those qualities, but to explain them, to help others understand them – players, journalists, fans – and, one day, he will be able to lead the club of his choice, whether as a coach, technical director or president.
But he is less likely to nutmeg a full-back, turn, elicit admiring expressions from the crowd before delivering a lightning assist or slotting a goal into the top corner with the outside of his right boot. Therein lies the “X” factor that could well propel Vinícius forward during the next month of voting.
3:10
How fate made a photograph capture 'the beginning of two legends'
Meet photographer Joan Monfort, who in 2007 captured young Barcelona star Lionel Messi posing with baby Lamine Yamal for a charity calendar.
Which brings me, finally, to Yamal. If we apply the boxing term “pound for pound” to the 17-year-old right now, then he is on the same level as Rodri or Vinícius in terms of how much he deserves to win this award which, despite its many flaws, remains one of the strongest indicators of greatness.
I know, I know… having established that this award belongs to last season, not the weeks since the new campaign began, I'm cheating by mentioning the fact that there is no one in the world right now who is more exciting, more stimulating, more amazing than Yamal.
I also think he is a sure contender to win the junior Ballon d'Or (called the Kopa Award in honour of Real Madrid's 1958 Ballon d'Or winner Raymond Kopa) at the same ceremony as the grand prize in Paris on Monday 28 October.
I say yes, because that's how I see it, although I do think there will be one anomaly: Bellingham (the current Kopa holder) will displace Yamal from the top three for the Ballon d'Or, but will be overtaken in the Kopa Trophy (for which the English star was still eligible last season) by the extraordinary Barcelona prodigy.
Let me give you some context. You will have seen how Yamal, last season, broke Barcelona and Spain's records by doing many things more precociously than Pele, Messi, Ronaldo, Johan Cruyff or virtually any legend you can think of. Then he championed exciting, attacking and inventive football during a European Championship in which too many international teams and star players were obsessed with not losing.
This season, shrugging off the impact of a violent attack on his father, Lamine has continued to shoulder the burden of Barcelona's first team after turning 17 in the summer.
In the entire glorious history of the Ballon d'Or, the youngest player to have reached the top three places was Ronaldo Nazario in 1996, at 20 years and three months, narrowly beating the only other twenty-somethings to have reached the podium: the Portuguese Eusébio (1962), the Italian Gianni Rivera (1963) and Messi (2007).
Now, Yamal is lucky enough to have the same footballing intelligence as Rodri: a tiny, ultra-intelligent, buzzing computer that crunches numbers, while the rest of us have the frontal lobe of our brains. But, boy, is he just as 'cuttable' as Vinícius.
At this rate, he will be the youngest player in history to stand on the podium of the Ballon d'Or next year, by a wide margin; perhaps the youngest winner ever. This year's winner probably came too soon for the boy who had barely turned 16 when the season started to have made it onto the top three podium. It's a shame.
Anyway, there are my passionate opinions. The shortlist will be announced on Wednesday and the discussions will continue well beyond the announcement of the winner on October 28. Who are you betting on? Who has won your heart and, if you had one, who would you vote for?
