"I believe I can win it this year. It's one of my objectives, and a short-term one at that." Kylian Mbappé said that to France Football — the very publication that hands out the Ballon d'Or — the same week the nominees were announced. Subtle, it was not.
He went further. "I don't know if anyone has ever finished top scorer in all the major competitions where all the best players compete," he said. "I believe history should always be recognized."
Fine. Let's recognize the history — all of it.
The goals are real, the context is complicated
Mbappé scored 25 goals in 31 La Liga games, winning back-to-back Pichichi trophies — the first man to do that in his debut two seasons in Spain since Mario Kempes in the 1970s. In the Champions League, his 15 goals matched a single-season record previously held only by Cristiano Ronaldo. At the World Cup, he took the Golden Boot with ten goals in eight matches and surpassed Messi as the tournament's all-time leading scorer. These are not small things.
But Harry Kane scored 36 Bundesliga goals in 31 games and 61 in all competitions. Mbappé's combined club and country total of 58 goals matches Erling Haaland's — and sits 15 short of Kane's 73. If this is a straight goalscoring contest, Mbappé doesn't win it.
His argument — and he makes it explicitly — is that the Ballon d'Or is not a straight goalscoring contest. "It's never given to standard players, but to exceptional players," he told France Football, invoking the Messi-Ronaldo era. He wants voters to weigh individual brilliance over team results.
The trophy problem isn't going away
Real Madrid won nothing in 2025-26. Not La Liga — Barcelona took that. Not the Copa del Rey — they lost to second-tier Albacete in the last 16. Not the Champions League — a quarterfinal exit. By the end of the season, there were locker-room fights and a viral online petition calling for Mbappé's removal from the Bernabéu. France reached the World Cup semifinals before losing to eventual winners Spain.
Every other serious contender on the shortlist has silverware. Kane won a record-breaking Bundesliga title with Bayern. Khvicha Kvaratskhelia lifted a second Champions League. Rodri, Lamine Yamal, and the rest of Spain's squad were crowned world champions in New Jersey. Yamal was also named La Liga Player of the Year — in the same league Mbappé plays in.
You have to go back to 2013 for the last time someone won the Ballon d'Or without a major trophy. That was Ronaldo, whose absurd goal tally helped him edge a three-way split with Messi and Franck Ribery. Mbappé is essentially betting the same logic applies thirteen years later.
It might. The award has no official criteria, and the 100 journalists voting on October 26 in London can weigh whatever they like. World Cup Golden Boot winner. All-time leading scorer in the sport's biggest tournament. Top scorer in the Champions League. That's the case.
What he can't argue his way around is that when the finals were being played — in Munich, in Seville, in New Jersey — he wasn't in them. His numbers are elite. His moments came in games that didn't settle anything.
