Harry Kane
Seventy-three goals across 64 appearances for club and country made this the second-highest-scoring season ever recorded by a player, behind only Lionel Messi’s 82-goal haul in 2011-12. It is a remarkable achievement for someone who once shared a Championship substitutes’ bench with Jamie Vardy. Kane was not considered a teenage sensation like several others on this list, yet at 33 he has firmly established himself among football’s elite.
It is surprising that a player who has scored at least 24 times in each of the past 12 campaigns, claimed consecutive Premier League Golden Boots, won the World Cup Golden Boot and collected two European Golden Shoes has never placed higher than 10th in the Ballon d’Or rankings.
Kane has always delivered impressive statistics, but trophies have now been added to his record. His long wait for team honours ended when Bayern Munich secured the Bundesliga title last year, and further success quickly followed. The club retained the league championship this season while also winning the DFB-Pokal and German Supercup.
England were unable to end their wait for a major trophy at the World Cup, but their captain scored six times and moved beyond Gary Lineker as the country’s leading scorer in the competition. Those performances kept him firmly in the Ballon d’Or discussion.
Lamine Yamal
“The key is to stay composed. Once I have the ball inside the box, I choose what comes next,” Lamine Yamal said in February after registering his first career hat-trick during Barcelona’s 4-1 victory over Villarreal. Such confidence might seem excessive from an ordinary 19-year-old, but Yamal is anything but ordinary.
He reinforced that reputation during the summer. The Spain attacker became the first footballer to play in both a European Championship final and a World Cup final before his 20th birthday, winning each of them. Although he scored only once at the World Cup, a relatively modest total by his exceptional standards, his influence remained significant. He earned a decisive penalty in the semi-final against France, completed more successful take-ons than Messi over the course of the competition and helped unlock an Argentina team determined to draw him into a physical contest in the final. Even more impressively, he entered the tournament while carrying a hamstring problem. After the final, Joe Hart summed up the occasion: “Lamine Yamal is 19 years old. What an incredible day for him. At 19, he has already completed football.”
His club record strengthens his claim further. Yamal produced 24 goals and 18 assists in 45 Barcelona appearances as the team captured La Liga and the Supercopa, giving him a convincing opportunity to improve on last year’s second-place Ballon d’Or finish.
Rodri
“The World Cup will show us the true Rodri,” Pep Guardiola said last October after the Manchester City captain returned from an ACL injury. Questions remained over whether the 2023 Ballon d’Or recipient could recover his finest form, but Guardiola’s prediction proved accurate once again.
Rodri served as both Spain’s driving force and its source of security. He controlled the rhythm of matches, managed possession and neutralised almost every threat faced by the defence, which conceded just once in eight tournament games. His 756 completed passes were the most in the competition, while he also led the rankings for touches, passes that broke defensive lines and deliveries made in the opposition third. Rodri completed 101 passes in the final alone, suffocating Argentina so effectively that they failed to register a single attempt on target.
As Spain’s captain, he raised the trophy and received the Golden Ball as the tournament’s outstanding player. He also became only the fourth man to win the World Cup, European Championship, European Cup and Ballon d’Or, entering a select group alongside Gerd Müller, Franz Beckenbauer and Zinedine Zidane.
Kylian Mbappé
Kylian Mbappé competed directly with former Paris Saint-Germain teammate Lionel Messi throughout the World Cup. The pair challenged for the title, the Golden Boot, the Golden Ball and the status of the tournament’s highest scorer in history. Mbappé prevailed in two of those four contests. His brace against England in the third-place match made him the first player to claim the Golden Boot on two occasions. Those goals also took his World Cup tally to 22, one ahead of Messi, while making him the first man since Müller in 1970 to score at least 10 times in one edition.
Despite those achievements, Mbappé was not satisfied. “I would rather have missed out on being top scorer and reached the final,” the France captain admitted. His club campaign followed a similar pattern: prolific in front of goal and rich in personal recognition, but without a trophy. He scored 42 times in 44 games and led the scoring charts in both La Liga and the Champions League, yet his team won neither competition. The goals arrived consistently, but the medals did not. As Kane’s career has demonstrated, scoring records by themselves are seldom enough to secure the Ballon d’Or.
Lionel Messi
Lionel Messi sat by himself on the pitch before a crowd of 80,000, his boots removed and his gaze fixed in the distance while Spain’s substitutes ran past to celebrate. It was far removed from the storybook farewell the Argentina captain had imagined for his final appearance on the global stage. Based on his displays over the preceding six weeks, he seemed worthy of a better conclusion, even if Argentina did not.
Some believed Messi’s role at the tournament would amount to little more than a sentimental farewell for a former superstar approaching his 40th birthday. He immediately challenged that view by scoring a hat-trick in Argentina’s opening match. Two goals against Austria followed, along with another against Jordan. After dominating the group phase, he drove Argentina through the knockout rounds with a goal against Cape Verde, a goal and an assist against Egypt, an assist against Switzerland and two further assists in the semi-final victory over England. Without Mbappé’s two goals in an unusual third-place playoff, Messi would have finished with the Golden Boot.
Is it possible for him to receive the Ballon d’Or after losing the World Cup final? Only four times in the past 19 years has the honour gone to someone who did not win the Champions League, World Cup, European Championship or Copa América during the same year. Messi accounted for three of those victories. A ninth award appears improbable, but simply being considered at the age of 39, while competing in MLS and after defeat in a major final, underlines his extraordinary stature.
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