Why Paris Saint-Germain players should feel hard done after their Ballon d'Or rankings?

Monday night, while Paris defeated Lyon 2-0, Harry Kane was crowned 2026 Ballon d'Or winner after a historical 2025-2026 campaign that saw him tally 73 goals and eight assists in 65 games for Bayern Munich and England, while winning the Bundesliga, the DFB-Pokal and the German Super Cup. The Englishman who succeeded to Ousmane Dembélé was also awarded the Gerd Muller Trophy rewarding the top goal scorer of the season. He narrowly beat former PSG player Kylian Mbappé and Barcelona prodigy Lamine Yamal.

This night that also saw Paris Saint-Germain crowned best men's club for the second consecutive after winning the Champions League for a second consecutive time also left many PSG fans with a bitter taste in their mouths when they saw the ranking of all their players nominated in the top 30. The club had a record breaking 10 players in the final 30 players. Despite their side's domination throughout the campaign in Europe and domestically, many ended much below their expected ranking with Fabian Ruiz (10th), Ousmane Dembélé (7th) and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia (6th) all finishing outside of the top 5 despite being favourites to the title.

These final ranking were certainly made possible due to the heavy weight of the 2026 World Cup in the mind of the voting journalists, which helped Lionel Messi finish at the 5th spot, in front of the Parisians trio. Now the real questions should be should PSG players feel hard done with a three-week competiton being moreimportant than 10 months of competition and should the World Cup be that important for the Ballon d'Or.

Should PSG players feel an injustice after the Ballon d'Or ranking?

Paris was by far the best team last season with Luis Enrique at the helm, they managed to win a second Champions League title after another dominating campaign. Several players were important in this season with Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Ousmane Dembélé and Vitinha spearheading the team alongside ever important players such as Willian Pacho, Achraf Hakimi and Joao Neves. The plurality of candidates in may also have been a reason to explain the disappointing ranking of PSG players, though, a player like Ferran Torres who did not particularly perform last season with Barcelona, managed to finish ahead of several players just because of his decisive goal in the World Cup final.

Therefore, these ranking are often not realistic to the performances of the players and now seem more like a popularity contest with PR campaigns while the World Cup years completely overshadow all that happened throughout the season.

Add us as a preferred source on Google

Follow