Next English Ballon d'Or winner? Phil Foden, Harry Kane or Jadon Sancho? Which Three Lion will win it next?
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Updated 17/11/2021 at 17:12 GMT
It's been 16 years since an Englishman last won the Ballon d'Or (Michael Owen in 2001), so who could be the next player from the country ton win the prize? Phil Foden is ranked as England's best chance of producing a winner for 2021, but the Manchester City midfielder is only a 100/1 shot according to the bookmakers.
Phil Foden playing for England against Albania.
Image credit: Getty Images
2021 was a good one for English football. In fact, it was one of the best. The national team reached the final of a major tournament for the first time since 1966 and came within a penalty shootout of winning the whole thing while the Champions League final, played only a month beforehand, was an all-English affair.
Not so long ago, English football found itself the butt of footballing jokes made across the continent, but those days are gone. Instead, England is leading the way, not only as home to the most popular, most lucrative domestic league on the planet, but in terms of its production of some of the most exciting young players in the sport.
So why after such a glittering year has England failed to produce a genuine contender for the 2021 Ballon d’Or? If the national team had a successful summer and Chelsea and Manchester City competed for the biggest prize in the club game, why is English football so woefully represented in the voting for the sport’s biggest individual prize?
According to most bookmakers, Phil Foden is the English player most likely to win this year’s Ballon d’Or at 100/1. This doesn’t just place the City midfielder behind the likes of Lionel Messi, Jorginho, Robert Lewandowski and Mohamed Salah, but also Ciro Immobile, Federico Chiesa, Paul Pogba and Lorenzo Insigne.
Of course, Messi, Lewandowski, Jorginho and Salah, just to name four, deserve to be seen as potential Ballon d’Or winners ahead of Foden. The point isn’t that English players are being cheated out of individual prizes in the voting. Instead, it’s a question of why English players aren’t rising to the very top as individuals.
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Slimani 'proud' to have Salah competing for 2021 Ballon d'Or
Only five times has an Englishman won the Ballon d’Or. This is a lower number than those boasted by almost all of England’s closest rival nations including Germany (seven), Netherlands (seven), Portugal (seven) and France (six). Even more striking is that there has been just one English Ballon d’Or winner (Michael Owen in 2001) since 1979 (Kevin Keegan).
It’s been 16 years since an English player even finished in the top three of the Ballon d’Or voting (Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard in 2005). Since then there has been four English Champions League winners and three all-English Champions League finals, yet this has had very little bearing on the France Football award.
With English football at the beginning of an apparent golden generation, though, this will surely change. Foden might well become the first English Ballon d’Or since Owen such is his importance to club and country. The 21-year-old is now the youthful face of Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City and could be the player around which Gareth Southgate has built his England team around by the time the 2022 World Cup kicks off.
Jadon Sancho would have been considered another English player with a good chance of winning the Ballon d’Or at some point in the future had his career not recently suffered an unfortunate diversion. The winger might still flourish as a generational talent, but it might require him to escape Manchester United.
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Harry Kane playing for England against San Marino.
Image credit: Getty Images
Raheem Sterling ranked 12th in the voting for the 2019 Ballon d’Or, but he finds himself out of favour at City while Harry Kane, for all his goals at the elite level, has only ever finished as high as 10th (2017 and 2018). The Tottenham Hotspur striker will be nowhere near that ranking this year having scored just once in the Premier League so far this season.
Jude Bellingham, the 18-year-old taking the Bundesliga by storm, might well be English football’s next Ballon d’Or winner. The teenager is already a proven performer at the top level, and one of Borussia Dortmund’s most important components. On his current trajectory will be one of the game’s best players for a decade, or more, to come.
This generation of English players won’t be defined by how many Ballon d’Or awards they win, but the sight of one of Foden, Sancho, Kane, Bellingham or another Three Lions member would symbolise how the nation has turned a corner in its production of talent. At some point, a golden ball might come down the conveyer belt.
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