Harry Kane has won his first Ballon d’Or, becoming the first Englishman to lift football’s most famous individual prize since Michael Owen in 2001. The Bayern Munich striker collected the award in London, his hometown, at the first Ballon d’Or ceremony ever held in England, capping a season in which he scored 73 goals in 65 appearances for club and country, helped Bayern win the German league and cup double, and scored six goals as England finished third at the World Cup. Kane finished ahead of Kylian Mbappe and Lamine Yamal, and speaking after the ceremony he described bringing the trophy home for England as something really special, telling AFP that he loved representing his country and that having an English winner again, in London of all places, meant a great deal to him.
The 33-year-old, England and Tottenham’s all-time leading scorer, said his move to Bayern in 2023 had improved him and taken his game to another level, and the voting bore that out. Mbappe finished second despite topping the scoring charts at the World Cup, in the Champions League and in La Liga, but his goals did not bring team success for France or Real Madrid. Yamal, the 19-year-old Barcelona winger, placed third and missed the chance to become the youngest Ballon d’Or winner, although he did claim the young player of the year award for a third consecutive time.
The women’s award went to Alexia Putellas for a third time, after she helped Barcelona win last season’s Champions League before moving to London City Lionesses. Putellas, who won the prize in 2021 and 2022, succeeded her Spain teammate Aitana Bonmati, who had won the previous three awards but suffered a season-ending leg injury, and she put her latest triumph down to everything the team achieved last season. Elsewhere, Spain’s Luis de la Fuente won men’s coach of the year after leading his country to World Cup glory, beating Paris Saint-Germain’s Luis Enrique and Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta, while Barcelona’s Pere Romeu took the women’s coaching award. Spanish duo Unai Simon and Cata Coll were named the best men’s and women’s goalkeepers respectively, and Paris Saint-Germain claimed men’s club of the year after winning a second consecutive Champions League title.
For Kane, the award settles a long-running question about whether one of the great goalscorers of his generation would ever receive the game’s highest individual honour. It also ends a wait for English football that has stretched a quarter of a century, and it does so in front of a home crowd, in the city where his career began. That combination of personal vindication and national first is what makes this Ballon d’Or feel bigger than one season’s statistics, however remarkable those statistics are.
