Ballon d’Or combined XIs: Players who came closest to winning in every position | OneFootball

Manchester City midfielder Rodri pulled off a shock by winning the 2024 Ballon d’Or award.

Even a few hours before the ceremony on Monday, most expected Real Madrid star Vinicius Jr to scoop the award after a year in which he lifted La Liga and Champions League titles and hit new levels, becoming a real talisman for Los Blancos.

But, ahead of the event in Paris, it was confirmed that Vinicius Jr and the rest of the Real Madrid contingent would not be in attendance in protest at the Brazilian not winning the award, clearing the path for Rodri to scoop a well-deserved prize.

Rodri is the first Premier League player to win the Ballon d’Or since Cristiano Ronaldo back when he was a Manchester United star in 2008. Meanwhile, he’s the first non-forward to win since Luka Modric in 2018.

But he may not be the last. That’s if Liverpool right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold gets his way. Heavily linked with Real Madrid as his contract at Anfield runs down, the England international has declared he wants to make history as the first in his position to win the Ballon d’Or.

“I believe I can,” Alexander-Arnold said recently. “I want to be the first full-back to ever do it. “It’s only the morning after you retire that you’re able to look in the mirror and say, ‘I gave it everything I got’.

“It doesn’t matter how many trophies you win, or how many medals you’ve got. It matters what you give to the game and if you reach your full potential.”

That got us thinking: who are the players who have come closest to winning the Ballon d’Or in each position?

Below, we’ve compiled two combined XIs of such players*; one post-2000 and another looking further back to build an all-time line-up.

Post-2000

It’s no surprise to see Ronaldo and Lionel Messi in this team, while Kaka and Ronaldinho were among the final attacking players to win the Ballon d’Or before their period of utter domination began. But there are some interesting names to look at here.

In goal, Gianluigi Buffon came second in 2006 after helping Italy win the World Cup, with Oliver Kahn his closest contender after finishing third in 2001 and 2002.

Kahn’s fellow German, Phillip Lahm, comes in at right-back with Real Madrid and Brazil legend Roberto Carlos on the left. As Alexander-Arnold mentioned, no full-back has ever won the Ballon d’Or, but Carlos came second in 2002, while Lahm has come closest among right-backs with his sixth-place finish in 2014; just after captaining Germany to their fourth World Cup.

At centre-back. Fabio Cannavaro won the 2006 award for his role in Italy’s World Cup triumph, while Virgil van Dijk finished second in 2019 after lifting the Champions League with Liverpool. If he couldn’t win it, then you can bet we’ll have to wait a long while for another centre-back to lift the award.

Modric’s 2018 win is the only one from a midfielder of any sort since Kaka scooped the Ballon d’Or in 2007, while next to him, Andres Iniesta finished second in 2010 and third in 2012. Iniesta’s partner in crime at Barcelona, Xavi, also finished third three times.

All-time

How do you think this side would do at a World Cup if they could all play together in their prime? They’d take some stopping!

The all-time XI reads as a who’s who of football legends, starting in goal with Soviet Union stopper Lev Yashin, whose 1963 triumph remains the only one for a player between the sticks.

Even looking right back to the start of the Ballon d’Or, Lahm remains the closest right-back to winning the award, with the same said for Carlos on the left — although Paolo Maldini also enjoyed two third-place finishes.

Cannavaro is at centre-back once again, but is this time partnered by German icon Franz Beckenbauer. Der Kaiser won the 1972 and 1976 awards; the former after leading Germany to European Championship glory and the latter after helping Bayern Munich to a third straight European Cup. Beckenbauer came in the top three no fewer than five times.

The German theme remains in midfield with Lothar Matthaus, who won in 1990 and came second in 1991, while Spanish legend Luis Suarez won in 1960 and finished in the top three four times.

Ronaldo and Messi make it in once again, of course. This was basically a direct extension of their head-to-head rivalry between 2008 and 2021, after all. But around them, we have some iconic names of the past. In attacking midfield is France’s Michel Platini, who won the Ballon d’Or three times back-to-back in 1983, 84 and 85, while finishing in the top three five times. Platini is one of five Frenchmen to win the Ballon d’Or, alongside Zinedine Zidane (1998), Raymond Kopa (1958), Karim Benzema (2022) and Jean-Pierre Papin (1991).

It should be noted that Johan Cruyff also enjoyed three wins but is edged out after only making the top three four times.

And on the left, completing this team, is Bulgarian legend Hristo Stoichkov, who won in 1994 after a year in which he won La Liga and reached a Champions League final with Barcelona, while firing Bulgaria to the World Cup semi-finals.

At this point, you’re probably wondering ‘where are the Englishmen?’ Well, the Three Lions have produced four Ballon d’Or winners. Kevin Keegan is the only one to win it twice (1978, 1979) but Michael Owen is the last from these shores to lift the Ballon d’Or, doing so in 2001 after dropping a mountain of goals to fire Liverpool to UEFA Cup, FA Cup, League Cup, UEFA Super Cup and Charity Shield titles. Bobby Charlton (1966) and Stanley Matthews (1956) are the other English winners.

*In cases where there are multiple winners, ties are settled by most Ballon d’Or awards. Where players are again tied here, total votes are used.