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The Ballon d’Or isn’t exactly an outright popularity contest, but there’s certainly more to who gets the award than a simple conversation of who has been the best player across the year.
Positionally, personality and prizes all seem to take huge standing in the overall podium rank, even now that the long-running era of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo dominance appears to have reached its conclusion, following the former’s move to MLS.
As such, it’s down to performance levels at the elite end, yes, but inevitably also playing for one of the superclubs, achieving something momentous at club level - often several somethings - and then, in years when the calendar allows so, adding success at international level.
Even so, there’s often also a storyline element which surrounds the front runners as the Ballon d’Or approaches, which this year will be in October, incorporating everything across 2023/24 as a result.
Heading into Euro 2024, for example, the narrative surrounded Toni Kroos. The midfielder had already announced his impending retirement, then won the Champions League final with his last club match. Could he repeat the trick on home soil and bow out with another trophy? He didn’t, of course. Spain saw to that, en route to the final themselves. It surely rules out Kroos as a retired victor of the game’s biggest individual prize, but two of his teammates are in the running: one obvious and often referred-to, the other overlooked and ignored in the wider Ballon d’Or conversation. Perhaps he shouldn’t be.
Let’s widen the lens, first.
Take away Messi winning three of the last four times it has been awarded (nothing in 2020, remember) and the stand-out contenders have been Robert Lewandowski, denied by the pandemic and decision-making, Virgil van Dijk after Liverpool’s European triumph, Karim Benzema who won in ‘22 and Erling Haaland, who won a treble the following campaign as well as the European Golden Shoe.
Messi, of course, could yet add to his own legacy with a Copa America final to come at the weekend. But his PSG time remains underwhelming and Inter Miami sitting second in the Eastern Conference probably isn’t going to move the needle enough.
Elsewhere in the Argentina and Colombia squads - the nations in that final - don’t have a standout performer from the domestic season to seriously weigh in with “only” a Conmebol continental victory.
Which means we can turn attention to the Euros final for other candidates, and in particular one on either team who partnered with Kroos at Real Madrid - and Jude Bellingham is a clear option for consideration if England win. He had a top campaign in LaLiga, ending as champion and third-highest goalscorer, as well as that European win to top off the season.
He’s also an attacker, a new signing, plus a young star who would represent a generational change from the aforementioned 30-somethings who have won it or nearly won it in recent times.
The other has none of those traits: he’s 32, he holds a decidedly less-glamorous position of right-back and has been at Real Madrid for over a decade.
But Dani Carvajal ticks every other box from trophies to quality level, after a genuinely elite campaign with Los Blancos - and as an added bonus, scored in the Champions League final itself. He has also been almost immaculate for Spain at Euro 2024, with the one stain on his copybook being a quarter-final red card; even there though, his dragging down of an opponent merely ensured his team would progress.
After suspension, he’ll be back in the lineup for the final as a crucial tactical component of Luis de la Fuente’s side and just one shy of his 50th cap.
At this point we should note another Spaniard - Nacho - also fits the bill in terms of those same trophies and teams, but the 34-year-old is much more of a squad player for club, has been rotated in and out for country and has already departed to Saudi Arabia in the close season. He did not, in any case, get near the performance level or consistency that Carvajal has produced, certainly in 23/24 but arguably even the year before too, not that that would matter in Ballon d’Or terms.
Carvajal has done the lot, won the lot, even worn the armband on multiple occasions while doing so.
He is not the typical profile of a Ballon d’Or winner, given his primarily destructive role and low-key leader status. And has he been, subjectively speaking, the best player on the planet? A difficult question but probably not, given some Spanish teammates are so much more wildly reviewed and revered.
But again, performance level isn’t the only criteria, and Carvajal - cynical challenges, Nations League final Panenka penalty winner and Champions League final man of the match all rolled into one - has as many credentials as anyone else this year if Spain emerge triumphant in Berlin.
