Harry Kane deservedly wins the Ballon d’Or

If you score 61 goals in 51 matches and then return to the pitch after the summer to score 10 goals in 11 matches – whilst also winning the Bundesliga, the DFB-Pokal and the German Super Cup, before finishing third in the World Cup – your season can only be described as extremely successful. And extremely successful seasons deserve to be recognised. That is why Harry Kane won the Ballon d’Or. And quite deservedly so, not least because the English striker carried Bayern Munich goal by goal through to the Champions League semi-finals.

And yet… and yet it was a World Cup year, and in a World Cup year, goals should only count for so much. What should matter most is that month of international football. And in that month, Harry Kane played well – not brilliantly, certainly not as well as he did for the rest of the year.

It should count… perhaps it simply has always counted; that’s all. After all, there’s nothing in any set of rules stating that the Ballon d’Or must be won by someone who has won everything, such as Fabián Ruiz, who first lifted the Champions League and then the World Cup, playing impeccably for long stretches despite a nasty knee injury that had ruined part of his season. Nor is it written anywhere that it must be won by someone who has lifted the World Cup – perhaps the player who was the best goalkeeper at the World Cup and who kept Spain’s goal intact for so long, and previously did the same for Athletic Club de Bilbao: Unai Simón.

The Ballon d’Or is an event of global interest; it needs a figurehead capable of attracting billions of views. And Harry Kane was better than Kylian Mbappé, who was exceptional at the World Cup right up to the semi-finals, top scorer in both the World Cup and the Champions League, but never decisive when it mattered most. And not a winner: he lost everything there was to lose. He also outperformed Lamine Yamal, who won La Liga as a key player, the World Cup without making a significant impact, and was eliminated in the Champions League quarter-finals, alternating between skill-showcase moments and frustrating debacles.

Was it truly necessary to award the Ballon d’Or to a member of the World Cup-winning Spanish squad? A national team that claimed the trophy as a cohesive unit, functioning as a tighter-knit group than any of its rivals, prioritizing collective, almost socialist play over individual brilliance?

Rewarding the individual in order to reward the team often turns into blatant hypocrisy. So, in the end, it really was almost better to shake things up. Harry Kane has won the Ballon d’Or. All things considered, it’s a significant shake-up. It’s a way of rewarding a sensational season whilst giving the finger to the lazy tradition of having to reward someone who’s played well for just one month in a year.