Harry Kane is the Ballon d'Or winner. He has been crowned the best player on Earth. He is the first Englishman since Michael Owen in 2001 to be awarded the Ballon d'Or. Life is good right now.

And perhaps in the last 25 years, we haven't been able to say that: the best footballer in the world right now is English. Yamal has a case to call himself the best right now; Haaland, too, at a push. But Kane's case is strongest based on the year he's had – and for all the tears for heroes, fake sheikhs, Iceland meltdowns and golden generations, the last quarter-century has produced plenty of solid footballers on Blighty – but never one who could rightfully claim to be in a league of their own.

Until now. The Ballon d'Or has served its purpose – if that's what you believe the purpose of the Ballon d'Or to be. And what do you believe? Because perhaps not even France Football really understand anymore what their baby really is or who it's supposed to represent.

“The Ballon d'Or rewards the best male and female player in the world, regardless of league or nationality,” France Football claims – and surely that should be enough. But no. There are three criteria: individual performances, decisive and impressive character; collective performances and titles won; and class and fair play. It feels, a little, like the criteria are at odds with the idea of simply voting for… “the best”.

If you were to vote for the best footballer in the world in 2009, it would have been Lionel Messi. It would have been Messi in 2010. It would have been Messi in 2011. In fact, Lionel Messi only really stopped playing like unanimously the best footballer on Earth around 2020, 2021, when Robert Lewandowski's ever-maddening goal haul started to ramp up a gear, and the GOAT started his long wind-down in club football at a dysfunctional Paris Saint-Germain. Yet it's cruel irony that Lewy missed out on a Ballon d'Or to Messi after the Argentine ended his international drought by winning a Copa America.

Somehow, Messi was also robbed along the way, missing out on five Ballons d'Or between his God-level peak of 2009 and 2020: four times to Cristiano Ronaldo, and once to Luka Modric. Ronaldo engineered himself into conversations of being the best on Earth through his sheer mentality, hard work and output. Was he ever a better footballer than Messi? No. Messi even outscored him twice out of his five BDO-winning seasons.

Haters gonna hate, but Ronaldo was simply a beneficiary of the voters wanting a different name on the trophy and the criteria considering team achievements. “The Ballon d'Or rewards the best male and female player in the world, regardless of league or nationality,” remember.

Modric, too, was one of the greatest midfielders on Earth at his absolute peak: but the best player on Earth in 2018? No. Certainly not better than, for example, Kevin De Bruyne that 12 months (not that De Bruyne was ever a better footballer than Messi over that time, either). Modric simply fulfilled the criteria of “collective performances and titles”, too, having won a Champions League and reached a World Cup final.

Because that's how it works. If you're by far and away the best player on Earth – Messi, Kane this year, Ronaldo Nazario, even, back in the day – then you get the award. If not, then is there a player who won multiple major trophies? If so, it's an Owen year. There's a very good case that had France made the World Cup final, Ousmane Dembele wins the 2026 gong once again. If Desire Doue gets the winning goal, it's him. If we're talking about 90 minutes deciding an entire season in a knockout competition, fair enough – but should it decide an award given to a player's entire calendar year?

The Ballon d'Or vote is an absolute mish-mash across categories: a competition where, in 2026, Julian Quinones is in the top 30 players on Earth. Because, of course, Siphiwe Tshabalala was one of the best players in the world in 2010.

Fabian Ruiz is not a better player than Jude Bellingham, and no, that's not English bias to say. But he's placed higher in the 2026 Ballon d'Or because he was the only player to have won both big competitions this year. Rodri has won two domestic cup competitions, plus the World Cup and the World Cup Golden Ball – yet he's somehow below Kylian Mbappe, who won a World Cup Golden Boot and absolutely nothing else with a Real Madrid side he hindered as much as helped, according to some.

So what are we voting for, here? Maybe Alessia Russo would like to know after she beat Aitana Bonmati in a Champions League final and a European Championship final last year, scoring in the latter… and still finished second to the Spaniard in the BDO, while images of Bonmati missing a penalty – no, really – were plastered on the big screen behind her.

Perhaps the strangest moment of the 2026 ceremony saw Unai Simon beat David Raya to the Yashin Trophy. While Raya picked up a third Golden Glove in a row in the Premier League, reached a Champions League final and has been the best keeper in the world over the past 12 months, Simon was picked ahead of him for Spain at the World Cup after finishing 12th with Athletic Club and bombing out of the league phase of the Champions League. Simon wasn't a hugely influential member of Spain's World Cup-winning squad, with a handful of saves after the quarter-finals and the highest line of any team in the tournament. But he got the award – and don't worry: if you think eight games is too small a sample size to receive such a nod, viral Cape Verde custodian Vozinha got a nomination, too.

Sadly, this isn't new. The Messi-Ronaldo era truly warped the award into becoming a ‘prom king’-style popularity contest – Michael Owen revealed last night that he learned he'd been given the award via a phone call in 2001 – but the list of Ballon d'Or winners is a weird mix of some of the best footballers who have ever lived (Ronaldinho, Kaka, Ronaldo) and those who were simply in the right place at the right time (Pavel Nedved, Matthias Sammer, Fabio Cannavaro). Scroll through the Wikipedia entry for the award, which lists every year's podium-placed players, and notice the glaring omissions of the greatest players of the 21st Century – Wayne Rooney, Sergio Ramos, Luis Suarez (who surely missed out on a nod due to the “class and fair play” criteria), Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Andrea Pirlo, Francesco Totti, Alessandro Nesta – then work out which years the likes of Jorginho and Deco were bumped up in, and how it aligns with them being influential cogs in successful machines.

It's unfortunately how voting panels operate. Colin Firth movie The King's Speech perfected a formula in cinema: if you do something so obviously 8/10, manage to steer away from controversy and offence and ride a good narrative, you may not be anyone's favourite – but on a voter's top 10, you can probably scoop a win from being everyone's second- or third-favourite.

The same goes in football. Erling Haaland finished second in the Ballon d'Or when he moved to Manchester City and climbed another level in everyone's perspective of him. He likely has to repeat that trick again – and win the Champions League in a non-tournament year, to boot – should he look to actually win the award. We've normalised his greatness far too much now to vote him the greatest player on Earth for simply what looks like “yet another very good Erling Haaland season”. The same maybe goes for Lamine Yamal, who will have to win a Champions League, maybe that and the Euros in 2028 to finally escape being the Golden Boy, and not the Golden Man.

That Kane's goalscoring momentum managed to carry him through to the prize without a Champions League or World Cup, despite Mbappe conducting a shameless, ‘Emperor's new clothes’-style PR tour, is a win for football. In years to come, the Ballon d'Or honours list should read as a who's who of GOATs: the best player in the world given the gong to honour everything they were and achieved that year.

Giving Kane the prize goes some way to restoring the Ballon d'Or to what it should be. A prize based on what happened on the pitch, not the campaign that followed. A prize for the footballer, not the team they played for. An award for the best player in the world.