7 facts you didn't know about the Ballon d'Or - including wild Lionel Messi stat
ByTNT UK
Published 26/08/2025 at 17:00 GMT+1
The countdown is on for the 2025 Ballon d'Or, with PSG's Ousmane Dembele and Barcelona's Aitana Bonmati leading the charge for the illustrious award. TNT Sports reveals seven curious and obscure facts you didn't know about the Ballon d'Or ahead of the ceremony on September 22, set to take place in the Theatre du Chatelet in the French capital. Were you aware of these quirky stats?
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With the Ballon d’Or winners set to be announced next month, TNT Sports reveals seven facts you probably didn’t know ahead of the ceremony.
PSG’s Ousmane Dembele, is the bookies' favourite, whilst Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal and Raphinha trail close behind after impressive seasons. Dembele's scintillating second half to his 2024/25 season culminated in PSG lifting the Champions League trophy for the first time in the club's history.
Aitana Bonmati leads the way for a third year in a row in the Women’s award, with Arsenal’s Chloe Kelly and Mariona Caldentey close behind. Five English players have been nominated, the most since the award's inception in 2018.
Oldest to ever do it
Stanley Matthews won the inaugural Ballon d’Or award in 1956, doing so as the oldest player to ever win the award at 41 years and 104 days old.
The right-sided midfielder was playing for Blackpool when he received the honour, and continued his professional career until he was 50 years old.
The 1953 FA Cup final is immortalised as the ‘Matthews Final’ for its namesake’s heroics in inspiring Blackpool to come back from a 3-1 deficit and win the tournament.
After Stanley retired from professional football, he left the country to coach amateur football abroad. In this time, he established one of the first all-black teams in South Africa in 1975, known as ‘Stan’s Men,’ during the height of the apartheid system.
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The Golden Ball
French Jewellers Mellerio have been crafting the Ballon d’Or trophy since the award’s inauguration in 1956.
The Mellerio family were originally Italian goldsmiths who moved to France in 1515 to develop their trade.
The trophy takes over 100 hours of work, with intricate processes employed to produce the shape of the ball.
The ball is finally covered in 18-carat gold-plating and is worth upwards of £3,000 in material costs alone.
Paul Scholes misses out
Paul Scholes has received the most Ballon d’Or nominations without ever receiving a single vote (5).
The Manchester United legend received nominations in 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, and 2007, but was never awarded a top three vote by the panel of journalists who decide the winners.
Scholes won 25 major trophies during his illustrious career, including 11 Premier League titles - more than any other English player - but never received an individual award.
Le Nouveau Palmares
Prior to 1995, only Europeans were eligible to be nominated for the Ballon d’Or. It wasn’t until 2007 that France Football magazine permitted players playing outside of Europe to be considered.
This is why legends like Pele and Maradona technically never won the award.
However, in 2016, France Football published a list of revised Ballon d’Or winners called Le Nouveau Palmares (internationalised reevaluation) to recognise the non-European players who they deemed worthy of the award, but were excluded due to the prioritisation of Europeans.
Pele was awarded the trophy seven times, including four in a row, whilst Maradona snatched the award from Igor Belanov and Lothar Matthaus.
Although recognising the significant achievements of some of football’s greats is laudable, the retrospective handing out of awards risks invalidating others’ achievements and looks at the season through a different, modern lens, omitting the sentiment of the time.
Superstar Academy
Only the footballing academies of River Plate, Sporting Lisbon, Manchester United, and FC Dynamo Kyiv have produced multiple Ballon d’Or winners.
You might have thought that Barcelona’s famed La Masia or AC Milan’s academy were factory lines for Ballon d’Or-clinching talent.
Alas, partly due to Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo’s dominance of the award in the 2010s, and partly due to the difficulty of winning such an award, only four clubs have ever produced multiple award winners, with two being the highest total.
Manchester United players have littered the nominations, but only Bobby Charlton and George Best reached those heights, having honed their craft in Manchester.
Denis Law and Cristiano Ronaldo were both winners whilst playing for the Red Devils, but came through Huddersfield and Sporting’s youth programmes, respectively.
Cristiano Ronaldo famously arrived at Man United for £12.24 million in 2003 from Sporting Lisbon.
Luis Figo, notorious for swapping Barcelona for Real Madrid in 2000, also began his career in the Portuguese capital.
Alfredo Di Stefano, one of Spain and Real Madrid’s most prolific goalscorers and a two-time Ballon d’Or winner, was Argentine by birth and played some of his youth football with River Plate.
Omar Sivori was similarly born in Argentina and developed with River Plate, but became a naturalised citizen of Italy to play his international football.
Dynamo Kyiv produced a number of incredible talents, highlighted by the great Andriy Shevchenko and Oleg Blokhin.
Blokhin won the award playing for his boyhood club, whilst Shevchenko led the line for AC Milan in his Ballon d’Or-winning season.
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A defensive anchor
Franz Beckenbauer is the only defender to win the award on two occasions.
The original ‘libero,’ Beckenbauer was recognised as the world’s greatest player in 1972 and 1976 whilst playing for Bayern Munich.
He is one of only nine players to have won the World Cup, the European Cup, and the Ballon d’Or throughout his career, and one of only three to win the World Cup as a player and a manager.
The only other defenders to win the award are Fabio Cannavaro and Matthias Sammer.
Generational talent
Lionel Messi is the only player to win the Ballon d’Or across three decades and for three different teams.
Messi won his first award in 2009, whilst playing for Barcelona. He scored 38 goals and notched 19 assists across all competitions, claiming the award by a then-record margin, and leading the Catalan giants to a historic treble.
The Argentinian maestro would go on to win the next three Ballon d’Or awards, becoming the first and only player to win it in four consecutive years. He was recognised as the best player in the world on five occasions throughout the 2010s, putting him in the lead for most Ballon d’Or awards received by any player.
Messi’s first Ballon d’Or of the 2020s came with PSG in 2021, in a year where he scored 41 goals and provided 17 assists for club and country. He won the Copa America with Argentina in 2021, claiming an international award for the first time in his career.
Having made his switch to Inter Miami in 2023, Messi’s heroics at the Qatar World Cup elevated him to yet another Ballon d’Or - his eighth - and the third club at which he has received the honour. He became the first ever player to win the award whilst playing outside of Europe.
Oli Blair
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