I raise a glass to my captain’s Ballon d’Or. However, three hours of feminist posturing is bad for your health.

Football is back home: after twenty-five years, an Englishman has won the Ballon d’Or, doing so at the ceremony marking the award’s seventieth anniversary held in London, and saving my television. If, after forcing me to sit through three hours of utterly dreadful live drivel, they hadn’t handed the trophy to Harry Kane, I would have hurled my beer mug at the screen. I came close to doing just that during Putellas’ acceptance speech – the Women’s Ballon d’Or winner who drove the audience to distraction by rambling on for what felt like an eternity, thanking teammates, her sister, mum, friends, managers, coaches, physios, even ‘the catering staff’, passers-by and fictional characters. The only reason football fans watched that overly glossy evening – where the guest players looked even more out of place than I would at a meeting of teetotallers – was to see who would win the Ballon d’Or: Yamal, Mbappé, Kvaratskhelia or Kane?, fans wondered, fully aware that entrusting a decision in any field to a hundred journalists is akin to allowing a drunk friend to drive with his headlights off after a Friday night at the pub. Having avoided the prospect of another Messi victory—who finished a disappointing fifth in the final rankings, underscoring the concerns raised about the judges—the question remained as to whether trophies, decisive goals, the team a player belongs to, or cronyism would prove decisive. I acknowledge my bias, yet in my view no one merited the award more than the England captain this year—for the goals he has scored, his leadership on the pitch, his consistent work rate in every match, and his lack of appeal to flashy sponsors and highlight-obsessed fans. Anyone who complains about the award going to a striker who had to leave Tottenham and move to Germany just to win something doesn’t understand a thing, as they say at France Football.

The award for my captain is a joy to watch, if only for the expressions on Yamal and Mbappé’s faces – third and second respectively – at the moment of the announcement, with the Spaniard at least having won, for the third year running, the award for best young player (“just what you wanted, wasn’t it?”, as Thierry Henry teased him whilst presenting the evening), whilst the Frenchman returned to Madrid with a souvenir from Big Ben. Kane had already taken to the stage shortly before to collect the award for the season’s top goalscorer. My apologies: top male goalscorer. This clarification is necessary because, once again this year, the usual charade of women’s football has been staged and presented as the equivalent of the men’s game – a farce that has been repeated for years without anyone being able to stop themselves from laughing.

I am not being misogynistic; I am glad women play football and I believe they should have professional contracts, but the politically correct notion that it must be marketed as the male equivalent is absurd, and it is embarrassing for the journalists in the studio who must pretend to follow it by commenting on the award going to Putellas and not to Pina, as if they were discussing Kane and Olise.

When they presented Kane with the trophy for the highest number of goals scored, they also honoured the Mexican striker from Pachuca Women’s, Charlyn Corral – about whom I shall refrain from comment, to avoid accusations of body shaming. When the videos of goals and saves by the male and female award winners were shown, the contrast was awkward: technical skills in slow motion in half-empty stadiums versus long-haired dummies lined up in goal. When someone said, ‘Only Messi has scored more than Putellas for Barcelona’, they had to hold me back and stop me from storming into the London theatre to throw punches. Watching the entire ceremony was a test of faith: three hours of platitudes about the importance of the team, washed-up former players in suits and ties reminiscing about how things were better when they were worse, musical interludes straight out of Dancing with the Stars, awards for social commitment to salve their consciences, and the sheer sadism of having two former Arsenal champions present the award for Team of the Year to Paris Saint-Germain. A notable moment occurred when Henry asked Michael Owen for his thoughts on the ceremony—which did not exist in his era—and the former striker recalled learning of his Ballon d’Or win via a phone call and receiving the trophy in front of a fake wooden bookcase, devoid of any fanfare. Twenty-five years on, it was another Englishman’s turn, and rightly so. I am certainly not going to start re-evaluating an award I have always despised just because my captain won it; if anything, it is Kane who is restoring its value. Observing the reactions from France and Spain was particularly notable. Congratulations, Harry. Now let us focus on winning the Euros and the World Cup.