Ballon d'Or Debate: Who Will Claim the Title?

The title of “best player on the planet” usually finds its way to the man holding a major trophy in a World Cup year. Spain’s summer on North American soil has rewritten that script again, dragging their stars straight into the heart of the Ballon d’Or debate.

Rodri already has his hands on the 2024 Ballon d’Or, the midfield metronome now joined at Barcelona by Lamine Yamal, the teenager who has turned raw promise into ruthless end product on the biggest stages. Both will feel the conversation belongs to them now. Both have the medals to back it up.

Harry Kane has numbers that normally end arguments. Sixty-one goals for Bayern in a single season, a haul that would have defined an era in another time. Yet the missing piece still glares back at him. No Champions League crown in 2026, no iconic night to anchor his campaign in the minds of voters. The goals are there, the glory is not.

That stage has belonged to Paris Saint-Germain. Back-to-back Champions League titles have shifted the power base to the Parc des Princes, and with it the Ballon d’Or spotlight. Ousmane Dembele has ridden that wave, his resurgence in Paris giving him a legitimate claim to stand among the elite. Any one of his team-mates could yet climb onto that podium, carried by a team that now expects to dominate Europe rather than dream about it.

Bacary Sagna believes the next man to rise should come from a different direction.

The former Arsenal, Manchester City and France defender, speaking to GOAL, did not hesitate when asked whether Kylian Mbappe is the outstanding player of the moment. “For me the best at the minute, he's in the top three. He had an amazing year and he is for me one of the best,” Sagna said, before adding a sharp caveat. Being a striker, he pointed out, naturally brings goals, and with them a kind of built‑in bias. The spotlight follows the finishers.

So he nailed his colours to another mast. “For me, Kvara deserves the Ballon d'Or,” Sagna insisted. Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, the electric winger who has torn through defences and dragged his side through a remarkable campaign, is the player who, in Sagna’s eyes, defined last season. No World Cup, no national narrative. Just relentless impact. Apart from the Champions League trophy itself, Sagna argued, most footballers would quietly admit that Kvaratskhelia was the most important player across the year.

Mbappe, of course, has his own towering case. Sagna acknowledged it without hesitation. An “amazing World Cup”, a flood of goals, and a level of performance that he described as simply Mbappe’s standard. That is the point, in Sagna’s mind: this is not a hot streak, it is a baseline. On pure talent and consistency, Mbappe belongs among the very few who can be called the best in the world. Maybe the best, full stop.

But there is a brutal question attached to that status: how much did it actually change his team’s season?

Real Madrid have somehow gone two straight years without a major trophy, an almost unthinkable drought for a club built on silverware and ceremony. In that time, their new “Galactico” has done almost everything individually. Two La Liga Golden Boots. Ninety goals in 106 appearances. A statistical storm. Yet the cabinet has stayed quiet.

Louis Saha, another former France international, can feel the weight that brings. Asked by GOAL whether Mbappe will ever lift the Ballon d’Or, he did not pretend the path is straightforward. Mbappe understands the equation as well as anyone: win the Champions League, and the individual awards usually fall into line. The biggest stage, the brightest lights, the sharpest judges. That is where reputations are sealed.

The problem is the pattern. Saha pointed to the awkward narrative building around Mbappe’s relationship with that trophy. He left a club that finally climbed the mountain, then joined one of the favourites, only to see them fall short of the final. The story writes itself, and not in his favour.

“It’s starting to question a little bit on the personal side,” Saha admitted. He even used the phrase “black cat” to describe the growing sense that something always seems to go wrong around Mbappe when it matters most. It is the kind of line no elite player wants attached to his name, and exactly the one Mbappe will be desperate to erase as quickly as possible.

Saha, though, does not doubt the forward’s right to dream of the Ballon d’Or. He believes Mbappe deserves it, even as critics pick apart his style, his hunger for responsibility, his demand to be at the centre of everything. To Saha, that is not a flaw but a hallmark of greatness. The greats want the ball, the moment, the noise. They want it all.

When it goes wrong, that same desire becomes ammunition. The spotlight that can immortalise you can also expose you. Saha drew a sharp comparison: if Cristiano Ronaldo had not converted his own avalanche of trophies into defining nights and decisive performances, the criticism would have swallowed him long ago.

That is the thin line Mbappe now walks. The numbers are there. The talent is unquestioned. Yet as the Ballon d’Or debate rages on—with Rodri, Yamal, Kane, Dembele and Kvaratskhelia all staking their claims—the question hanging over Mbappe is no longer whether he is good enough.

It is whether he can finally turn all that brilliance into the one season no one can argue with.