An early look at the 10 best candidates to win the 2025 Ballon d’Or

I always find it funny how the Ballon d’Or narrative changes over the course of a year – or season, now that the timeframe of the award has changed.

Like, when the 2023/24 season first started, all anyone could do was praise Jude Bellingham for taking LaLiga by storm, putting Real Madrid back on top, and scoring bangers in El Clasico to help affirm Real’s return to dominance.

The guy was leading the league in goals as a midfielder, and while his performances did decline a bit in the second half of the season, we are talking about a decline from being by far the best player in Europe to “just” being great.

And it’s not like Bellingham was bad at the Euros either. England almost won it, and he was literally the best player in the Final which England came agonizingly close to winning – and maybe would have won if they had an actual coach.

So it’s funny, then, that Bellingham isn’t even a Ballon d’Or candidate, whereas Rodri has usurped him, and I can’t seem to find anyone who can give a well thought-out explanation as to why he had a better season than Bellingham or Vinicius Jr. – or even some his teammates on the Spanish national team. Or how about Toni Kroos?

The Ballon d’Or has always been a popularity contest, in the sense that the award isn’t necessarily given to the most statistically dominant player or the most valuable player in the world, but rather to the player who captured the Zeitgest of the conversation.

In that way, you’d think that Jude Bellingham and Toni Kroos would be the frontrunners and not Rodri or Vinicius Junior, who have basically become the favorites by virtue of intense fan wars rather than any sort of logical discussion about what the award means.

Not that neither of them have cases, but there is a level of strong recency bias since neither were considered favored over Kroos or Jude early in the 2023/24 season.

All of this is a long-winded way to state that the best way to evaluate the best player in the world is to actually pay attention to everyone over the course of the entire season.

Sure, shining in the late stages of the Champions League knockouts, as Vinicius Jr. and Toni Kroos did last season, counts more than beating up on some hapless team in the group stages.

But at the same time, you can’t just eschew, say, scoring two bangers in El Clasico and carrying a team to an early-season cushion. Or, maybe worse yet, pretending like Lautaro Martinez didn’t have a great season all along, only to use him as some sort of a prop in the final weeks of the award season just to drag down the main competitor to your team’s Ballon d’Or candidate.

We are only a few games into the 2024/25 season, but it’s fair to set some early expectations for the 2025 version of the Ballon d’Or award by looking at players who are expected favorites or are starting the season hot.

Note: This list is in no particular order, because it’s so early in the 2024/25 season that it would be outrageous to think I could legitimately rank a top 10. Just picking a field of 10 is bold enough.

Manchester City ST Erling Haaland

Erling Haaland is going to be a Ballon d’Or favorite in every single season for, presumably, the rest of his career, and that’s because this award is heavily skewed towards goal-scorers – and Haaland is the best pure goal-scorer in the world.

Through three games, Haaland has seven goals, which is an absurd return. Haaland himself is absurd. The man walked into the Premier League and broke the single-season goals record in his first season while still tying a new career high with 8 assists.

Haaland is so good at doing what he’s paid to do – score goals – that I think people forget how good he is at setting up teammates. He doesn’t need to dribble past five people or get clever with it. All he has to do is use his body and slip a pass to another forward after drawing out defenders to create a goal for someone else.

Barcelona RW Lamine Yamal

Lamine Yamal was definitely better than Rodri at the Euros, and I can’t take anyone seriously who argues that point. You can make the case that Yamal is as good as any of the Real Madrid superstars, because, at 16, he was one of the best pure wingers in world football.

You know those old stories about how Michael Jordan would take someone else’s smack talk and just embarrass them because he took it personally? Yamal is such a nice guy that it’s easy to forget he can kill you just as bad if you try and cross him.

Adrien Rabiot, one of world football’s most fraudulent midfielders, decided to knock him before the knockout match between Spain and France at the Euros, and Yamal responded by scoring one of the goals of the tournament right in his grill and then trolled the hell out of him in Gen Z fashion.

Under Hansi Flick, the Barcelona attack looks like more than the sum of its parts, and Yamal is, quite easily, the best player in this attack. If you don’t have him on your list of Ballon d’Or contenders, then I honestly don’t even know what to say.

Liverpool RW Mohamed Salah

I respect Cristiano Ronaldo and have a nostalgia bias that makes it extremely difficult for me to admit that any winger in the history of the Premier League could possibly be better, and while I will die on the hill that Mohamed Salah isn’t anywhere near as talented as Manchester United CR7, the logical part of my brain knows that Salah’s body of work in the Premier League has surpassed Ronaldo’s.

Listen, I cannot emphasizes this enough. Salah walked into the Premier League for the first time and scored 32 goals as a winger. We all went crazy when Haaland broke the record with 36 in his first season, but Salah’s first Premier League season was even better than Erling’s.

I bring up Salah’s first season with Liverpool because, at 32, he’s never been better. For all the talk about him leaving Liverpool and going to Saudi Arabia, this man is operating at the highest possible level as a scorer and a creator.

That’s the difference with Salah. You can point to him scoring fewer goals, but that’s a reflection in the drop-off of the quality of the players creating chances for him. He is now the best creator at Liverpool, racking up double-digit assists like it’s nothing.

If Liverpool’s, supporting cast actually shows up this season instead of blasting clear chances into Row Z, Salah is a 20/20 goal and assist player, no question.

Manchester City CM Kevin De Bruyne

Rodri is a great player who had an incredible 2023/24 season. He is nowhere near Kevin De Bruyne. It’s even debatable if Erling Haaland is as good as De Bruyne, even at the age of 33, because the plays KDB makes and sees are beyond what any other human being is capable of in this sport.

De Bruyne is averaging 3.7 key passes per game to start the 2024/25 season. He makes it look so easy. And going back to the point about Rodri, as great as he was last season, KDB’s had like five better seasons than that, including the one at Wolfsburg.

Comparing any other Premier League midfielder to De Bruyne is an exercising in futility – or even stupidity. If you ever see a Manchester United fan claim that Bruno Fernandes is anywhere near De Bruyne, honestly, let them say it unchallenged, because it’s so unbelievably ridiculous that only a deluded Man United fan who thinks Cristiano Ronaldo and Jadon Sancho were the problems and that eighth place is acceptable would say.

Bayer Leverkusen AM Florian Wirtz

Florian Wirtz isn’t the next big thing in world football. He’s been one of the best playmakers on the entire planet for at least three seasons now, ever since he first registered 10 assists for Bayer Leverkusen.

Now, he is the best player on a team that went undefeated last season and was so good that they made a Bayern Munich team that was actually good, too, look like a disaster in comparison. (Remember, Bayern were a step away from taking Real Madrid out of the Champions League).

Leverkusen are in the Champions League themselves and firing on all cylinders with Wirtz continuing to excel. He has such an innate feel for the game and the ball, and he is a playmaker in its purest form in the attack, manipulating defenders and always finding that inch of space to deliver the final ball.

Arsenal RW Bukayo Saka

Bukayo Saka might end up being one of those players who excels for 20 years, wins multiple Premier League titles, and earns the respect of anyone without ever having a signature, standout season that earns the Ballon d’Or.

It sounds awful to say that, but in the era of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, there were at least 10 players better than Saka, such as Arjen Robben and Luis Suarez, who never won the award.

What makes Saka so good isn’t that he’s the best finisher or the best dribbler or the most explosive athlete on the pitch. It’s the fact that he is great at everything, bad at nothing, and he always shows up.

He’s like if a 10-year veteran in the midfield who does all the little things to make his teammates better was a right winger. He is so unique, and yet as Arsenal fans are quick to remind you, he’s as good as Salah in the sense that he is also a very valid 20/20 goal/assist player.

Real Madrid CM Fede Valverde

This is Fede Valverde’s year. Now 26 years old, the Uruguayan midfielder is in the true prime of his career for Real Madrid with the iconic Toni Kroos No. 8 emblazoned on his back.

When you talk about leaders who put the team first and are willing to put it all on the line for their clubs, Valverde is the first guy you have to think of. He has no weaknesses to his game and has steadily improved in every season to the point where he is quietly in the conversation for being THE best midfielder in the world.

If you think that’s an exaggeration, you really should turn on a Real Madrid game some time soon and watch him. Because he’s been their best player so far this season – not a forward, not Jude Bellingham, not even Dani Carvajal (a Ballon d’Or sleeper this year).

Valverde is averaging 2.5 key passes, 2.3 combined dribbles completed and fouls drawn, and 3.0 combined tackles and interceptions per game for Real Madrid. No weaknesses. I’m just waiting to see how many bangers he scores from 30 yards.

Bayern Munich ST Harry Kane

As massive of a club as Bayern Munich are – and only Real Madrid can say for sure that it is bigger historically – they don’t often produce Ballon d’Or winners. They’ve had half as many winners (three) as Barcelona and actually fewer distinct Ballon d’Or winners than Manchester United.

So in all likelihood, they are only going to have one Ballon d’Or candidate this year, and after a tumultuous offseason, there’s no guarantee they win the Bundesliga this season either.

But if they do have a big year, Harry Kane is the one to watch. His season slowed as Bayern sputtered, but at the beginning of the 2023/24 campaign, Kane was the best striker in the world and setting records with his new team.

Jamal Musiala is such a great talent and already one of the world’s best. I wouldn’t dare bet against him winning the Ballon d’Or at some point in his career. But he’s not better than Kane right now, regardless of what people tell you after watching the Euros and zero Bayern matches.

Kane is still class and, quite frankly, just as good as Haaland because he is a more complete striker as a dribbler, creator, and even with his positioning.

Real Madrid ST Kylian Mbappe

Kylian Mbappe is the most talented footballer in the world. If you watch Mbappe move off the ball, you can see that there is a difference between how he sees and thinks about the game and what his peers at the forward positions do.

He was a victim of his own desire to carry PSG to a Champions League triumph, but that cause was doomed to fail from the start. Now, Mbappe is on a Real Madrid side that actually has the ingredients necessary to win the big one, as they’ve done it twice post-Cristiano Ronaldo without needing Mbappe’s services.

They have the guts, experience, desire, and, most importantly, the quality to be the best in Europe. Mbappe went from Ousmane Dembele and Marco Asensio to Vinicius Junior and Rodrygo Goes.

After his first two goals in a Real Madrid kit against Real Betis, the floodgates are going to open for a man who owned two World Cups. Mbappe, on paper, is the Ballon d’Or favorite. In fact, he is so demanding that he may even be disappointed in his first season at Real Madrid if he doesn’t win it.

Real Madrid LW Vinicius Junior

Vinicius Junior is most people’s favorite to win the 2024 Ballon d’Or, so he is automatically the favorite to win it in 2025. But even if Rodri or someone else picks up the award this year, Vini Jr. would still be a reasonable choice in any given year.

If Mbappe is the most talented footballer in the world, Vinicius Jr. has been the most impactful at a club level. What else can you say about a man who has won two Champions League titles as one of the best players in the tournament (second in 2021/22 behind Karim Benzema and first in 2023/24).

Vinicius Jr. never stops running. He never stops driving at defenses, chirping at anyone within shouting distance to hype himself up, and creating chances to put his team and his teammates first.

He defends, he passes, he dribbles, he runs without the ball, he curls it to the backpost, he smashes it to the near post. Vinicius Jr. is effervescent, ever-present, and a natural-born winner who is so consistently good that if you want to keep your money safe, you should always have him as your default Ballon d’Or bet.

That might change once Mbappe clicks, but Vinicius Jr. is the more proven player for Real Madrid. He is their established superstar. Even when Jude Bellingham arrived and tore things up, Madridistas still placed Vinicius above him – and you can understand why.

Speaking of Bellingham, look, three Real Madrid players is enough, and with Bellingham moving to a midfield role in a 4-3-3, he’s going to get overshadowed.

And because people like Fede more than Jude and because Fede hasn’t been in the limelight as much, I do think Fede, with his start to the 2024/25 season, is slightly favored. But it is VERY early. When I make this list again (whenever I feel like it), Jude entering is always a possibility.