Even though we haven’t learned who the official Ballon d’Or winner of the 2024/25 season is as Lamine Yamal and Ousmane Demebele fight for the award, all of the European leagues have played at least three games domestically and the first Matchday of the 2025/26 Champions League is already completed.
So now is a good time to start the Ballon d’Or Power Rankings as an early barometer of the season to come for key individuals and breakout stars in European football this season.
Since it’s extremely difficult for defensive players to carry the team, go above and beyond, and capture the imagination of fans and the voters, this list is heavily skewed towards attacking players.
You’ll also find no players from Ligue 1 or the Premier League in this top 10. There’s no bias in these leagues, but there just hasn’t been nearly as much individual brilliance or quality in the English and French top flights as there have been in the, quite frankly, more captivating La Liga, Serie A, and Bundesliga.
10. Athletic Club LW Nico Williams
Nico Williams has flirted with a big Premier League move or jumping ship within La Liga from Athletic Club to one of the country’s biggest clubs for two straight summer transfer windows, but he has remained loyal – and paid quite handsomely – to Athletic Club.
Quietly, Williams has been a menace for the Lions of the Basque this season, and his mark of one goal and one assist belies a whopping 5.3 dribbles completed, 2.7 fouls drawn, and 2.3 key passes per game in an electrifying start to the campaign that could very well be a career year for an experienced player who is still only 23.
9. Inter Milan ST Marcus Thuram
Marcus Thuram, not Lautaro Martinez, has been the king of Inter Milan so far in the 2025/26 season, and, in all honesty, he was the more consistent and trustworthy all-around forward for the Nerazzuri last season.
The Frenchman remains all kinds of underrated and just scored a decisive brace in the Champions League in a 2-0 win for Inter over Ajax. In Serie A, the former Borussia Monchengladbach man has averaged 2.3 key passes and 2.0 dribbles completed per game with three goals and an assist for an otherwise disappointing Nerazzurri that just might be in a full-blown crisis without Thuram leading the way.
8. Villarreal RW Nicolas Pepe
Former Arsenal transfer bust Nicolas Pepe has become something of a meme internationally because of his rough time in North London after joining them for an insane 72 million pounds.
But the thing is, that’s how good the left-footed right winger was in Ligue 1 for Lille, as he scored 22 goals with 11 assists for Les Dogue in his final season before moving to the Premier League.
Saddled by the expectations and perception created by the price tag he himself never asked for, Pepe wasn’t actually bad for Arsenal – just not exemplary. But he has quietly rebuilt his career in La Liga with Villarreal, and after a highly underrated 2024/25 campaign, Pepe has been the league’s best player after global superstars Kylian Mbappe and Lamine Yamal to start the 2025/26 campaign.
7. Borussia Dortmund ST Serhou Guirassy
No single player means more to his team than Serhou Guirassy does to Borussia Dortmund, and while the moody striker can often come off as a Nicolas Anelka clone with his sulking and frustrating shoot-first mentality, the moments of individual brilliance he can conjure up have literally saved games for BVB.
Guirassy has scored four goals in three games for the Black and Yellows of the Bundesliga, creating chances out of sheer nothingness and dragging the team to what has been an undefeated start to the season thus far.
6. Bayern Munich LW Luis Diaz
Like the other former Premier League stars before him, Luis Diaz has taken well to life in Bavaria, and his dribbling ability and, most importantly, his work rate have fit Die Roten predictably perfectly.
Diaz has given Harry Kane and Michael Olise more space to work with, making Bayern significantly more dangerous, as can be observed with how they dismantled a tough Chelsea side 3-1 in the Champions League.
The Colombian international already has three goals and two assists to his credit through three matches as a winger, and he is averaging two key passes per game with double that amount in combined dribbles completed and fouls drawn per game.
5. Bayern Munich RW Michael Olise
Michael Olise was the best Bayern Munich player of the 2024/25 Bundesliga campaign, and he joins his new partner on the wings as a legitimate Ballon d’Or candidate in 2025/26.
It feels like Olise doesn’t get enough credit for his all-around brilliance, and I chalk that up to people paying frustratingly little attention to the beautiful, free-flowing league that is the Bundesliga.
Highly intelligent and technical, Olise has three goals of his own this season and has stepped up to another level as a progressor in the absence of the injured Jamal Musiala, averaging a hefty three dribbles completed per game.
4. Juventus AM Kenan Yildiz
If Serhou Guirassy is the most important player to his team’s success, then Kenan Yildiz is a very close second for Juventus and matched Guirassy stride-for-stride with a spellbinding performance in a 4-4 draw with BVB in the Champions League.
Yildiz’s catalogue of goals and assists since emerging at Juve is among the best in European football, and it is outrageous to think that he and his agent had to threaten to leave during the 2023/24 season in order to force stubborn old Max Allegri to give him starts.
He is now the No. 10 and the face of Juve for good reason. The versatile playmaker/winger has made either the center attacking midfield or left wing position his own.
Yildiz has three assists in three Serie A matches this campaign with 3.7 key passes per game and 3.3 dribbles completed and fouls drawn per match. He just might be the best playmaker in world football at this very moment.
3. Barcelona RW Lamine Yamal
Quietly, Lamine Yamal has two goals and two assists in three starts on the Barcelona wing, and he is poised to have his more productive career season from a goal contribution standpoint.
And the Barcelona superstar is every bit as important to the club from a progressive standpoint with an insane 6.0 dribbles completed per game, as well as 2.3 fouls drawn and 2.3 key passes per match.
In 2025/26, we are seeing a revival of the one-on-one wingers who leave fullbacks for dead, but with all the great dribbles in world football, Yamal is on a different plane of existence.
2. Bayern Munich ST Harry Kane
More love needs to be sent in Harry Kane’s direction, because for all the increased team success he’s expereincing in Bavaria with Bayern Munich, he seems to have lost some mainstream luster after leaving London and the attention mongering of the Premier League.
What Kane is doing as an all-around striker for Bayern, running the show and scoring goals both, is simply unthinkable, and he’s taken on even more of a creative burden with Jamal Musiala injured.
Kane is averaging a stunning 3.3 key passes and 4.0 combined dribbles completed and fouls drawn per game for Die Roten while scoring five goals with three assists in three games.
If Bayern Munich go far in the Champions League again, it will be due to Kane, and if they can defy the odds and reach the Final, that could be enough for Kane to steal the Ballon d’Or before his career closes and bring this prestigious individual honor back to England.
1. Real Madrid CF Kylian Mbappe
The biggest name in world football today, Real Madrid’s superstar has risen above the wreckage of disappointing Brazilians Rodrygo Goes and Vinicius Junior to become the unquestioned star of the biggest club in the world with young phenoms Arda Guler and Franco Mastantuono supporting him in different playmaking roles.
Mbappe looks like the early mainstream Ballon d’Or favorite in 2025/26, scoring crucial goal after crucial goal as Real Madrid have started the campaign with four straight wins to start the season – and Mbappe has four goals to his game.
What’s more impressive is how Mbappe has successfully changed his game to fit the Real Madrid system as a center forward and the more demanding, structured Xabi Alonso system.
He is dropping deeper to help the team and create, taking more players on, making smarter runs off the ball, and even pressing effectively for a much more dangerous 2025/26 version of Real Madrid.
And with 4.8 dribbles completed and 3.5 key passes per game, the stats don’t lie. Mbappe is owning games all by himself, and, now, he doesn’t need Vinicius Jr. and Rodrygo to step up. As they continue to disappoint, Mbappe will continue to go Thanos Mode and just do it himself.
Joe Soriano is the editor of The Trivela Effect and a FanSided Hall of Famer who has covered world football since 2010. He’s led top digital communities like The Real Champs (Real Madrid) and has run sites covering Tottenham, Liverpool, Juventus, and Schalke. He also helped manage NFL Spin Zone and Daily DDT, covering the NFL and pro wrestling.