Has the Messi story lost its impact? Ballon d'Or criteria in the dock

70 years of controversy: the apology to Iniesta haunts the justice of the Ballon d'Or

Harry Kane's coronation as the 2026 Ballon d'Or winner on Monday evening in London settled nothing. If anything, it reignited the thorny, deeply sensitive question that never goes away: can the voting system really pinpoint the best player, or does it hand out a prize shaped by criteria that bend to interpretation, where collective silverware, personal impressions and media momentum all blur into one?

The England captain and Bayern Munich striker saw off Kylian Mbappé and Lamine Yamal to claim the award. He scored 73 goals for the Bavarian club and his country across the 2025-2026 season, drove Bayern to a domestic treble and netted 14 times in the Champions League.

Those numbers hand Kane a powerful case. They do not, however, close the argument over how such figures translate into votes, nor over the weight each criterion carries when you stack up players of different positions, roles and circumstances.

Spain's representative opens the door to controversy

After the ceremony, José Félix Díaz, director of the newspaper "AS" and the only Spanish representative on the voting panel, revealed that his top three picks included Kane, Mbappé and Yamal, but in a different order from the final result.

Speaking on the programme "El Larguero" on "Cadena SER" radio, he said: "I was expecting Mbappé or Lamine Yamal, because Harry Kane is missing something". He also pointed out that 9 of the ten players he chose finished within the top ten in the final standings. Díaz has not yet revealed the full order of his vote, nor has he said whether he placed Mbappé or Yamal first.

One journalist's view may not prove Kane's win undeserved. But it lays bare part of the dilemma: voters disagree on what "the best" even means, and that cannot be reduced to a clean mathematical or statistical equation.

Here the real problem begins. Had the award rewarded numbers alone, you could build a ranking from goals, assists and attacking contributions. Had it rewarded titles alone, the trophy record would have settled it.

The rules blend decisive individual displays, collective achievements and sporting conduct. Yet it is difficult, indeed impossible, to explain how each journalist read those criteria to land on his vote exactly.

2010: Messi's brilliance and the apology to Iniesta

One of the award's most controversial memories dates back to 2010, when Lionel Messi claimed the Ballon d'Or after a year that saw Spain crowned world champions in South Africa. Andrés Iniesta, scorer of the winning goal in the final against the Netherlands, came second. Xavi Hernández came third.

Messi hardly lacked the credentials to win it. He was among the world's most prominent stars. Still, the result raised fresh questions about the fairness of the voting before the current criteria were adopted, and how a player's individual brilliance should be weighed against a historic collective achievement.

The controversy did not stay a mere public debate. In April 2018, Pascal Ferré, then editor-in-chief of "France Football", published a tribute to Iniesta in which he apologised for never awarding him the Ballon d'Or across his career.

He wrote: "Forgive us, Andrés", describing his absence from the list of winners as one of the most painful of all, and speaking of what he called a "democratic flaw" that he hoped Iniesta would put right with an exceptional showing at the World Cup in Russia.

Ferré was talking about a player who finished the 2010 race as runner-up to Messi, then came third in 2012 behind Messi and Ronaldo, despite winning the European Championship with Spain and being named the best player at that Euro.

If "France Football" itself spoke of a "democratic flaw" in Iniesta's case, the public has every right to ask: were the later reforms enough to stop the same feeling, or the same mistake, from recurring, even when the names and circumstances differed?

Messi's absence fuels further controversy

Kane's case this year lays bare just how complex and delicate this comparison becomes. The English striker piled up a huge goalscoring tally and dragged Bayern Munich to an exceptional domestic season. Mbappe and Yamal entered the race with different but equally strong arguments, each built on their individual brilliance and their impact with Real Madrid, Barcelona and the France and Spain national teams.

Then there is Messi. The man who claimed the Ballon d'Or after lifting the Qatar World Cup slipped to fifth this time, despite leading Argentina to another World Cup final and his exploits with Inter Miami. That tells you the debate is not only about the criteria. It is also about media influence, about how narratives get shaped and attention steered towards one story at the expense of another.

Here lies the irony. Messi himself, and Ronaldo too, rode that very momentum on previous occasions. On others, he faced questions over whether the coverage matched what his rivals had actually delivered. None of this proves his ranking was unfair, but it throws up a fundamental new question for this thorny file: is the race settled by what a player does on the pitch alone, or by his ability to become the story the media chooses to promote?

Controversy will not end: who gets to decide the best?

Reforming the Ballon d'Or does not mean rewriting the rules every time an argument breaks out over who deserves to win. No system can guarantee total consensus in a team sport. What it demands is greater clarity on how the criteria are applied, a serious debate about the limits of journalistic voting, the way nominees are selected, and how to balance individual brilliance against collective success.

The problem is not that Kane or Messi came out on top. It is that every result reopens a question successive reforms have failed to settle. What makes one player the best in the world? Who holds the authority to decide that, and by what measure? The current voting panel now spans the globe, with wildly different footballing cultures and voters who read the criteria in very different ways.