The 69th edition of the award ceremony of the Golden Ball – the most coveted individual recognition in the world of football – will be held on September 22nd at the Theater du Chatelet in Paris. The prize will go to the best footballer/footballer of the second season France Footballa French sports weekly that has established recognition since 1956 (and since 1995 he has extended the audience of the possible winner also outside Europe). The first to win it was the English Stanley Matthews of Blackpool, while in women’s football the prize was established only since 2018, when the Norwegian of Lyon Ada Hegerberg won it. Let’s find out what the selection criteria are, who votes and how the performance of the individual candidates are analyzed in detail.
Who votes for the golden ball
To vote for the assignment of the premium are 100 journalists from the 100 nations with the highest FIFA ranking (the world ranking that orders the various national teams based on the results, for the female one are 50 for the first 50 countries). The list is drawn up by the editorial offices of France Football and the Equipe (the main sports newspaper Oltralpe). Together with them there are also Didier Drogba, ambassador of the Golden Ball, and a journalist who changes the year after year who guessed the podium of the previous year or in any case has approached more than all and is out of the 100 main voters.
An exception was made between 2010 and 2015, when the Golden Ball was combined with the Fifa World Player of the Year, the award awarded by the international federation to the best world player of the year. In those years they not only voted for the representatives of the first 100 ranking countries, but a journalist, the coach and captain of each national team affiliated to Fifa.
The vote takes place electronically from 4 to 30 September, as the journalist Paolo Condò explained to the post, who since 2010 has voted to represent Italy. Officially the votes remain secret until the prize is awarded. Until 2023, the winners were notified in advance, in particular to organize an interview and a photo shoot. Since 2024 it is no longer like that.
What are the selection criteria and how the performance of the candidates are analyzed
Let’s start by saying that the male golden ball is assigned by analyzing the single season, for the 2025 edition it will be 2024/25, while before 2022 the ceremony was taken into consideration and the ceremony took place in December. The period is therefore the integrity of the season, from 1 August to 31 July. Currently the vote takes place on the basis of three main criteria:
- Individual performance, leader and driver character
- Performance and team results
- Class and fair play
The vote for the Golden Ball works like this: the France Football editorial staff makes a first skimming, selecting the 30 best players of the season together with the members of the editorial staff of the team, from the best juror of the previous edition and by the Ambassadors UEFA Luís Figo and Fabio Capello for the men’s trophy and Nadine Kessler for the female one. Then the 100 jurors must choose 10 of them in order of preference: the first will take 15 points, the second 12, the third 10, and then 8, 7, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
The Manchester City Rodri midfielder, holder of the title, had 41 points ahead of the Madrid Vinicius (1,170 at 1,129). Five years earlier, in 2019, Lionel Messi had won the Golden Ball with only seven points ahead of Virgil Van Dijk (686 to 679). The most small gap in the history of the award dates back to 1996, when the German Matthias Sammer passed the Brazilian Ronaldo of a single point (144 to 143), in an era in which the voters were half of today.
Records and statistics of the Golden Ballon
Lionel Messi is the player who has repeatedly won the Golden Ball, with eight trophies. Immediately after there is Cristiano Ronaldo with five. The Argentine-Portuguese duopoly dominated the scene from 2008 to 2023 included (in 2020 it was not awarded Covid due to two exceptions, namely the Croatian Modric in 2018 and the French Benzema in 2022
- Ronaldo was the youngest winner of recognition: 21 years and 3 months (1997).
- Stanley Matthews was the oldest winner of the prize: 41 years and 11 months (1956).
- Cristiano Ronaldo obtained the greatest number of nominations: 18 (from 2004 to 2019, and from 2021 to 2022).
- Lionel Messi, in addition to its 8 total victories (absolute record), holds multiple primates related to the Golden Ball, among which they stand out:
greater number of consecutive victories: 4 (from 2009 to 2012);
Most podiums: 14 (8 wins, 5 second places, a third place);
The only footballer has won the prize in three different decades: once in the 2000s (2009), 5 times in the years 2010 (from 2010 to 2012, 2015 and 2019) and 2 times in the years 2020 (2021 and 2023);
The only footballer to have won the prize by militating in three different teams: Barcelona (from 2009 to 2012, 2015 and 2019), Paris Saint-Germain (2021) and Inter Miami (2023);
The only footballer to have won the prize by militating in a non -European team: Inter Miami (2023).
