This year’s ceremony was held in London to mark 70 years since Stanley Matthews, an Englishman from Stoke, won the very first Ballon d’Or in 1956. It is 25 years since Michael Owen became the seventh British player to do so. The Men’s Ballon d’Or is the most prestigious individual prize in world football. Few Britons have followed his example. On October 26th Harry Kane, England’s captain, became the sixth.
Mr Kane scored 61 goals for Bayern last season—19 more than any other player in Europe’s top five leagues and the highest tally anyone has managed since the 2014-15 season. Since the league was created in 1992 only three of its players have won the Ballon d’Or (Mr Owen plus Mr Ronaldo, when the Portuguese superstar was at Manchester United, and Spain’s Rodri, when playing for Manchester City). English clubs have won just six Champions League titles since 2000. PSG were able to rest eight of their starting 11 in their previous game.
Mr Kane stands out even among the superstars at Bayern Munich, a German club that have won their domestic league in nine of the last ten seasons. Add the six he scored to become England’s all-time top World Cup goalscorer, and it would have been a robbery had he not won the prize. Those same European clubs tend to dominate the Champions League, the top level of European football, which carries a lot of weight in Ballon d’Or nominations; at Tottenham Mr Kane scored many goals but won no major trophies.
The prize is well-deserved. Watch him play and you will notice that he is much more than a goalscorer. But he is a goal machine. With talent more evenly spread, a Premier League season is gruelling. On October 14th Manchester City played Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), the French and European champions. Man City managed two, and were beaten convincingly.
Because he was playing in the Premier League, partly. Because premier League players are scrubs, that is not. Because the league’s competitiveness makes it difficult to rack up the accolades, and the goals, expected of a Ballon d’Or winner, it is instead.
Historically, Europe’s top goalscorers have played for clubs in countries like Spain—where two clubs rule over an otherwise middling league.
In 2017, playing for Tottenham Hotspur, he became the first player in seven years to outscore Lionel Messi (a record-holding eight-time Ballon D’Or winner) and Cristiano Ronaldo (a five-time winner) over a calendar year. He scored 56 goals in 52 games for club and country, an astonishing record. But Mr Kane’s brilliance is not new. Yet he came just tenth in the vote for the Ballon d’Or. Why?
