The Ballon d’Or organisers have pushed back on a persistent assumption in football circles, making clear that playing for a European club is not, and has not been for nearly two decades, a requirement for winning the sport’s top individual prize. The clarification came in a Thursday statement timed to the growing debate over who will claim this year’s award following the FIFA World Cup.
The statement tackled the recurring narrative head on, noting that speculation about a European bias resurfaces every year around award season. To settle the question, organisers said they went back through the data themselves rather than relying on assumption.
What they found reflects a history that has shifted considerably since the award’s creation. When France Football launched the Ballon d’Or in 1956, only European players at European clubs could even be considered. That changed in 1995, when eligibility opened up to players of any nationality, though they still had to be playing in Europe. The bigger shift came in 2007, when organisers scrapped geographic restrictions entirely, turning the award into a genuine search for the best player in the world regardless of league or location.
Yet the numbers tell a more complicated story. Of the last 18 men’s winners, only one lifted the trophy while playing outside Europe, Lionel Messi in 2023, by which point he had joined Inter Miami in Major League Soccer. Even that example comes with an asterisk, according to the organisers, since the award has judged performance across a full season rather than a calendar year since 2022. That meant much of Messi’s winning campaign was built on his time at Paris Saint-Germain, well before his move to the United States.
On the women’s side, only one name breaks the European pattern. Megan Rapinoe won in 2019 while playing for Seattle Reign FC, marking the sole instance of a winner based outside Europe.
Organisers were careful not to dismiss the broader trend, acknowledging that Europe’s grip on the award remains strong in practice, even if not in rulebook. They pointed to the rising quality of leagues elsewhere as a factor that could eventually reshape those odds, suggesting the door is genuinely open wider than history alone would suggest.
Their closing message left little ambiguity about intent, insisting the award can technically go to any player, from any league, anywhere in the world.
