Ballon d’Or Power Rankings: Why Mohamed Salah deserves the individual prize over Ousmane Dembele or Raphinha

The European club season is done and, unless you happen to be particularly exuberant on the importance of the Club World Cup (you shouldn’t be), there is nothing more that the best players on the planet can do to earn themselves the Ballon d’Or. Come September 22 they will have their answer as to who is deemed to have had the best season. Between now and then, well that leaves plenty of time to debate.

And that can be a lot of fun. Of course, the biggest prizes in team sports should be and are the ones won by the collective but assessing who has been the best footballer on the planet in any given season is hardly an exercise that lacks merit.

This year of all years it promises to be all the more enjoyable: there is no obvious lock for the prize as there was in most years of Lionel Messi’s pomp. At the start of 2025 it seemed like there might be with Mohamed Salah so imperious. At that time few if any could have imagined the rapid rise of Paris Saint-Germain from the fringes of Champions League contention to the best side in Europe, such that star forward Ousmane Dembele is heavy favorite to actually win this prize.

Not that we will be attempting to predict who will the Ballon d’Or. If you want to get a sense of that, check the odds. Altogether more interesting is who should be winning it. What will decide that? Output matters most of all and given that the most valuable thing on a football pitch is getting the ball in the net, it’s fair to say that this is going to be heavily weighed to those who make that happen whether through scoring or creating. Stopping the other team scoring still counts for an awful lot though but perhaps in this season with stunning output from elite forwards we aren’t looking at another Fabio Cannavarro.

While we don’t want to dive deep into rings discourse, it does matter that goals, assists and clean sheets lead to winning the biggest prizes. After all, the Ballon d’Or’s second criterion is how a player contributes to “team performances and achievements”. There will always be a balance to be struck between the team, the individual and even the third criterion of “class and fair play”; this is more art than science though that is not an excuse to not apply a fair chunk of the latter to things.

Finally at this stage of the season it’s going to be the raw output that counts most of all. When we track the 2026 contenders early in the season their xG and per 90 statistics will give us a sense of what might be to come over the remainder of the season. For 2025, however, we know almost everything we can. So, here’s how the contenders shake out.

1. Mohamed Salah, Liverpool (+900)

Prior to this season only two players in Premier League history had registered 47 goal involvements over the course of a season. Both of them needed 42 game campaigns to do it. Not Salah, who was able to ease up on the finish line and still match that record, ending his season as a whole with 34 goals and 23 assists. Liverpool’s early exit from the Champions League shouldn’t be held against him, not when he powered an unfancied Liverpool to top Europe’s most competitive league at a canter.

2. Raphinha, Barcelona (+1000)

What a story this would be. At the start of this season the Barcelona hierarchy were doing all they could to rid themselves of Raphinha, nine months later he was the star of their title triumph. The Brazilian was even better in the Champions League, matching Cristiano Ronaldo’s goal contribution record with 21. Had he won it, that probably would have been enough to get him top spot.

3. Ousmane Dembele, PSG (-200)

The case for Dembele is pretty straightforward. His blossoming into one of the world’s best center forward’s was the greatest factor in PSG becoming a side capable of winning the Champions League. And he was brilliant leading the line, delivering some of his very best performances in the biggest games of the season. It’s just the two above him did it for a whole year in more competitive domestic environments.

4. Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, PSG (+1600)

That top three probably belong in a tier of their own; from here on out we’re ranking players who aren’t quite at Ballon d’Or level but have been brilliant none the less. Kvaratskhelia is certainly one of those, the other great change to PSG midway through the season that saw them become a superteam. The pure output is nothing on the players around him but Kvaratskhelia gets his team into scoring positions and delivers with elan.

5. Pedri, Barcelona (+3300)

The outstanding midfielder of the season, and it’s not just me saying it. “A player like Pedri is more important than Lamine Yamal, Raphinha or Lewandowski,” said Toni Kroos last month, before labelling him “the best in the world in his position.” His ball progression statistics were customarily excellent but it was in his full-throated commitment to tackling and interceptions that the 22-year-old surprised many.

6. Lamine Yama, Barcelona (+275)

In pure output terms, Yamal is a hair off the top three with 39 goal involvements to his name. That is downright incredible for any player, let alone a 17 year old, but it is the narrative force of doing what he has been doing in Champions League semifinals that has him as one of the favorites. On his current trajectory it is a matter of when, not if, he joins that select group.

7. Achraf Hakimi, PSG (+5000)

There’s plenty from PSG who merit a place around the top 10 but Hakimi edges it for two reasons. First his dynamism going forward and backwards typifies the qualities of Luis Enrique’s side. Then there are the goals in the quarters, semis and final. That all counts.

8. Kylian Mbappe, Real Madrid (+3300)

A case could be made that Mbappe’s presence destabilised Real Madrid so much to disqualify him from the Ballon d’Or list. Equally the integration of a new signing wasn’t the only reason Los Merengues, wracked by defensive injuries, struggled. They might have struggled more without Mbappe’s 42 goals.

9. Virgil van Dijk, Liverpool (+10000)

Van Dijk has been nothing short of outstanding this season and what he might have lost in half a yard of pace has been more than made up for with the qualities he has been developing on the ball over recent years. 

10. Harry Kane, Bayern Munich (+10000)

This is a fairly straightforward one. Kane sits second across Europe’s big five leagues for goal contributions in nearly 1,000 fewer minutes than Salah. Even at 31 he delivers league-leading scoring and top 10 assists, now with trophies to go with it.