The Ballon d’Or winner will be known on 26 October. Kylian Mbappé, nominated for the ninth time, told L’Équipe and AS why he believes he deserves it.
“People say I haven’t won a team trophy. But the Ballon d’Or is an individual trophy,” he said, in comments reported by HLN.
Marcel read the sentence twice. He could not find anything wrong with it.
He’s right, and that’s the annoying part. Somebody invented an individual prize in a sport played eleven against eleven, it was handed out for decades, and now we act surprised when a player turns up to claim it for himself. I’m not criticising. I’m comparing.
The rest of the case rests on goals. Top scorer at the World Cup with 10, in the Champions League with 15, in La Liga with 25. And a record: 22 World Cup goals, the highest total in the tournament’s history.
“Being the all-time top scorer in World Cup history (22 goals), going past all the greatest legends in the game, in the most important tournament this sport has ever produced, is breathtaking. I believe that making history should always be rewarded,” he said.
He also wants the trophy to “come back to Real Madrid, to the Bernabéu and to the Madrid fans”. The last player at the club to win it was Karim Benzema, in 2022, his former France team-mate.
Benzema in 2022, I remember it, that was the day before yesterday. Back then you learned the name that same evening and talked about it on Monday at the chip shop, over two pages of a weekly paper. Now we know the date a month in advance and everyone comes to plead his case before the hearing. Note that I’m not against progress. I’m against this progress. Well. It’s the times.
It’s true, we checked: HLN · Voetbal.
