Ballon d’Or Power Rankings: As Kylian Mbappe falls, is it Harry Kane’s to lose?

Folks, we are so back! It’s been a long winter in which our Ballon d’Or power rankings have been hibernating but we come to you at the turn of the tide. The final weeks of the domestic season are upon us, the Champions League is down to its last four and the World Cup glimmers on the horizon. This is where the best footballer on the planet reveals themselves.

They will, however, have been seeding more than a few suggestions over the last eight months. In the most basic terms, if you haven’t got your team to a position where they might win the Champions League, you might well find yourself getting dinged in these rankings. And (if it matters as much to you, unnamed elite footballer), it might hurt your chances in the vote too. When we left this exercise before Christmas, it looked like a clear three-way battle for first place. Now the frontrunner looks clear but with plenty of yards left to cover, there are at least a few who might burst out of the chasing pack to snatch it at a photo finish. Let’s get our binoculars out and assess the runners and riders:

1. Harry Kane, Bayern Munich and England (+2)

It’s hard to really argue against this, isn’t it? Even if you want to apply a bit of a Bundesliga tax to the sheer volume of goals Harry Kane has weighed in at club level, well, there’s 50 of them, including in both legs of the win over Real Madrid in the Champions League, both stagings of Der Klassiker, matches against Atalanta, Chelsea. In pretty much every big game this season, Kane has turned up. Scrub penalties from the equation and his club tally does drop to 35 but that is still six more than the nearest in Europe’s top five leagues.

In total terms (in general, we don’t want to adjust to per 90 too often, if you want to have had the best season of anyone a key aspect is regularly turning up), Kane also sits in the 97th percentile of forwards for chances created and expected assists, the 96th for assists, the 99.9th for shots. He is even in the 96th for possession recoveries. This is a 32-year-old at the peak of his powers. Given that turning that into winning the really meaningful prizes does count, he might need to win a Champions League and/or a World Cup to get the votes but if he keeps performing like this in those months when the ankles start aching, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t.

2. Michael Olise, Bayern Munich and France (+3)

As a pure engine for my own enjoyment of football this season, no one quite matches Michael Olise. The France international is nothing short of a joy to watch, utterly at ease with his talent, so secure in the knowledge he can beat anyone he needs to with a dribble, a pass or a shot. He is one of those players who has you giddy with excitement when you’re about to watch his team play. He also addresses the most important question any eye test merchant must address — is he a baller? — with a statistical profile, that, well…

I suppose it’s one of those ones that has you double-check the data source. He can’t be at the absolute pinnacle in every chance creating metric, can he? He can.

3. Vitinha, PSG and Portugal (+6)

Now, this is fiddly. Paris Saint-Germain are quietly on course for what would be a season perhaps even more exceptional than last season. If they were to go back to back in the Champions League, they would have done so with the minutes of their star players heavily surpressed, partly through the injuries that did not hit them 12 months ago and also as Luis Enrique tried to navigate the months after a season that ran from August 2024 to July 2025. Ousmane Dembele has only just cleared 1500 minutes; half of the outfield starters from last year’s Champions League final win haven’t yet reached 2000.

Not that Vitinha deserves to be in the running on the basis of attendance, of course. The central midfielder leads Europe’s top five leagues for progressive passes and is second only to Lamine Yamal for progressive carries. He gets the ball into dangerous areas just like he did last season but this term he is even more effective in those spots. Seven goals, eight assists from a player you’d nominally term a DM? That is remarkable stuff.

4. Lamine Yamal, Barcelona and Spain (–)

5. Kylian Mbappe, Real Madrid and France (-4)

Here’s where it gets a bit contentious but we should say that post-Olise, there was a real drop off in the strength of each player’s candidacy. If Kane or his Bayern running mate stay on the path they’re on, there’s no catching them. Spots three through six right now are a group of quite hard-to-separate players jostling for the podium. 

One might imagine that Kylian Mbappe would be a bit higher than he is but it is worth saying that when you strip penalties out of the equation, it is Yamal who leads on goal involvements, 35 combined assists and goals to 33. It is Yamal who is trending towards winning a major club honor with Barcelona nine points clear in La Liga. The flipside is that if we want to get more predictive, Mbappe is trending towards adding a few more non-penalty goals and assists before the year is out. We all, of course, know what happens when Mbappe hears Le Marseillaise in the summer of an even-numbered year not divisible by four.

We’re at the picking hairs stage here. There’s no wrong answer. But maybe there’s a slightly righter one, that being my answer.

6. Erling Haaland, Manchester City and Norway (-4)

Is Erling Haaland coming out of his late winter drought? The signs are that this is a player who is feeling himself again with the international break having landed at a particularly fortuitous moment for a striker who leads the entire City squad in minutes played across all competitions this season. Even before the two weeks where he only played for just over an hour, it looked like Haaland was starting to dig himself out of his rut.

He isn’t remotely the striker of earlier this season in terms of shot volume, xG or goals scored but perhaps City don’t need him to be that good as they try to chase down Arsenal. All they need is for him to get the goals that bend the tight games, of which there might be a few, as they bid to win yet another Premier League crown.

7. Declan Rice, Arsenal and England (new entry)

This probably hasn’t been Declan Rice’s best season in an Arsenal shirt and there have been a few moments down the stretch where he has looked like he is struggling with the weight of minutes. At this moment, it might feel implausible that an Arsenal player could win the Ballon d’Or but it is worth noting that they remain emphatically alive in the title race and favorites to advance to the final of the Champions League. Win either of those trophies, let alone both, and why should their best player not be in the conversation for the biggest prizes?

8. Luis Diaz, Bayern Munich and Colombia (new entry)

Luis Diaz isn’t going to win the Ballon d’Or. He is not the star attacker at Bayern Munich and the country for whom he ought to be, Colombia, are almost certainly not going to make the sort of impact on the World Cup that would have him garlanded with honors. When your two teammates are effectively vying with each other to be the best attacker in the world this season, there aren’t many flowers being directed your way. And yet it is worth scrolling back up to look at Olise’s percentile rankings and comparing them with Diaz’s.

The gap is not that sizeable. That Diaz makes fewer progressive passes shouldn’t be a huge shock, he’s one of the guys that you want on the end of those passes. That’s how he ends up with 0.61 non-penalty xG per 90 and more than a goal or assist per 90, too. It might just be that Diaz is the perfect third attacker, the glue guy who enables the other superstars to excel. We’ve seen that with Mohamed Salah when Diaz was at Liverpool. They don’t give Ballon d’Ors for making more illustrious teammates look better but maybe they should give Diaz a Ballon d’Argent.

9. Vinicius Junior, Real Madrid and Brazil (-2)

There was a little moment there, back when Mbappe was sidelined, where you could just about make the case that at the exact instant Vinicius Junior was the best player in the world. Freed from the shackles of Xabi Alonso, as he saw it, he cut loose on opponents who had no answer for him. Since the change in the dugout at Madrid only four players — Kane, Yamal, Deniz Undav and Joao Pedro — have more goals in Europe’s top five leagues, their domestic cups and UEFA competitions. Vinicius looks back to his best. 

Unfortunately for him, that improvement did not trigger Real Madrid getting the success they need. Unless he delivers at the World Cup, it will be hard to frame his season as more than one of flashes.

10. Julian Alvarez, Atletico Madrid and Argentina (new entry)

This is always the hardest to pick because it means snubbing so many deserving alternatives. In no particular order, flowers to Rayan Cherki, Pedri, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Bruno Fernandes. Alessandro Bastoni, were it not for that night against Bosnia…

Just ahead of them lies Julian Alvarez, who has hardly set La Liga alight this season. Eight goals and four assists are hardly awe-inspiring numbers, particularly when he’s already bettered them in the Champions League. Those nine and four were vital in Atletico Madrid advancing past Barcelona and even in punishing Tottenham for their profligacy. You rather feel like the forward Arsenal so admire might have something to say about who will be facing Paris Saint-Germain or Bayern Munich in Budapest.