Both back the best players – even at the expense of their own teammates. The best players of last season, above all: those who deserve to win the next Ballon d’Or. It is simply the latest peak in the extraordinary duel between Kylian Mbappé and Lamine Yamal, played out at a distance. One was the top scorer at the last World Cup, the other won it. One is Real Madrid’s ace, the other Barcelona’s rising star. And so neither club is indifferent to this debate between two number ones, especially now – voting closes on 28 September – with the most prestigious individual award in football about to be handed out.
This is more than just active campaigning: there is nothing unusual about Los Blancos and the Blaugrana hoping their own favourite wins, and it would naturally be a major occasion, all the more so at the expense of their eternal rival. In recent days, though, El Mundo reports, emissaries from the two clubs have allegedly embarked on a genuine behind-the-scenes campaign to win Ballon d’Or voters over to their side – voters from various media organisations. Every statement and every silence can now be read according to the numbers each side needs; remember Stanis La Rochelle in Boris? “Let’s not forget Liguria”? Well, Mbappé is doing more or less the same thing when he says he would be happy to “dedicate the Ballon d’Or victory to Africa”, where around twenty key delegates are based. Then there are the long-standing diplomatic grievances that inevitably resurface, above all “the Rodri scandal” – at least, that is what the Madrid camp calls it – when, in 2024, the Ballon d’Or went perhaps surprisingly to the midfielder then at Manchester City rather than Vinícius Júnior, as so many had expected, with Real Madrid responding by boycotting the ceremony. Ever since, Florentino’s club has felt it has unfinished business with France Football, the magazine behind the award, and has applied further pressure to make amends for what it sees as a wrong. But Barça is hardly standing by.
If Mbappé and Yamal consider themselves the best of the lot, it would still be a mistake to leave the others out of the race. According to Harry Kane, the more than 70 goals he scored last season speak for themselves. Fabián Ruiz is the only one to have won the domestic league, the Champions League and the World Cup in the space of a few weeks, while Rodri can point to being named MVP of the tournament in the United States and is fresh from his move to Barcelona – another serious claim. In short, the tension is rising on several fronts, and if the pre-emptive controversy grows year after year, it only underlines how the Ballon d’Or continues to lose sight of what it was supposed to mean in the first place. Sometimes it rewards the best player of the moment, sometimes the best performance for a national team, sometimes neither – just ask poor Lewandowski. Once merit falls away, there is plenty of room for manoeuvring, until in the end the winner is simply the one who manages to do the most for their own cause – and gather the most votes along the way.