🏆 Ballon d'OneFootball: Our countdown begins with... | OneFootball

Welcome to the 2024 Ballon d'OneFootball.

Over the next 10 days, we will be counting down our top 10 men's footballers in the world right now, before revealing the winner on 27 July 2024.

You can read here how we voted for this year's award.

And here is our list so far.

Today we begin with...

10th: Lautaro Martínez, Inter and Argentina

Goals in 2023/24: 27

Assists in 2023/24: 7

Trophies won in 2024: Serie A title, Copa América.

Highest ranking among voters: BR-PT 🇧🇷 (4th)

Why were they nominated?

Not only did he lift the Scudetto with Inter last season, but Lautaro was also Serie A's top scorer in 2023/24 with 24 goals, and was voted the league's MVP. Not a bad first season as club captain.

If that weren't good enough, he then went on to be top scorer at the Copa América with five goals, and scored the winner in the final, where Argentina lifted the trophy for a second successive time.

Best moment since the start of 2023/24?

It would have to be his winning goal in the Copa América final. Argentina coach Lionel Scaloni had made the controversial decision to start Lautaro on the bench for both the semi-final and the final, and it wasn't until the final went to extra-time that the Inter striker was thrown on.

But he soon showed Scaloni what the Albiceleste had been missing, when he raced onto a through ball from Giovani Lo Celso before coolly firing across the Colombia goalkeeper and into the far corner to enshrine himself in legend.