Closest Ballon d’Or Races In Recent History

Whether you agree with the decision or not, Lionel Messi has beaten Robert Lewandowski to thee 2021 Ballon d’Or, while the Bayern Munich forward has still not been awarded the cancelled 2020 gong that he would almost certainly have won.

At least he won the brand new ‘Striker of the Year’ award, eh

But it definitely wasn’t the closest race, let’s have a look back through the years to see which ones were even tighter…

The Argentine won his seventh golden ball by just 33 votes, making it one of the closest run races in the history of the award.

One point between Matthias Sammer & Ronaldo (1996)

1st – Matthias Sammer (144)
2nd – Ronaldo (143)
3rd – Alan Shearer (107)

Nearly two decades passed before our next entry on this list. Footballers were presumably harder to judge back in the days of black-and-white televisions with about four channels on them.

And sure, you couldn’t stream games on the internet in 1996, but we had a better understanding of the global game for sure.

Just after his 20th birthday, Ronaldo was denied the Ballon d’Or by Matthias Sammer. Way to ruin the fun for everyone, Matthias.

Cristiano Ronaldo sees off Messi & Franck Ribery (2013)

1st – Cristiano Ronaldo (1365, 27.99%)
2nd – Lionel Messi (1205, 24.72%)
3rd – Franck Ribery (1127, 23.36%)

When FIFA and France Football combined forces to award the Ballon d’Or, the scoring went off the scale – I mean, these three all received over 1000 votes, while fourth-placed Zlatan Ibrahimovic only just broke the 250 mark.

Journalists still had votes to cast, but so did members of FIFA’s football committee, plus the head coach and captain of every national side.

The 2013 race was the closest as a joint award, with Cristiano Ronaldo winning his first Ballon d’Or as a Real Madrid player.

Messi returns to prominence at expense of Virgil van Dijk (2019)

1st – Lionel Messi (686)
2nd – Virgil van Dijk (679)
3rd – Cristiano Ronaldo (476)

After a mammoth three years without a Ballon d’Or, Messi reclaimed the throne in 2019 after another impressive season for Barcelona.

They were, however, knocked out of the Champions League by Virgil van Dijk’s Liverpool, throwing away a 3-0 lead in the semi-finals as the Reds marched on to European glory.

Van Dijk, widely considered the best defender in the world at the time and one of the catalysts behind Liverpool’s rise to glory, was tipped to win the Ballon d’Or for his efforts, but Messi just about beat him to the gong.

Franz Beckenbauer wins a three-way fight between West Germans (1972)

1st – Franz Beckenbauer (81)
=2nd – Gerd Muller (79)
=2nd – Gunter Netzer (79)

West Germany boasts the proud distinction of being the only country to hold all three places on the Ballon d’Or podium in the same year – and they did it twice.

The first came in 1972 off the back of their triumph at the European Championships, with Der Kaiser just about winning France Football’s biggest honour.

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