2025 Men’s Ballon d’Or Power Rankings: Paris Saint-Germain duo fight Barcelona sensation Lamine Yamal – but how about Mohamed Salah and Kylian Mbappe?

In the men’s award last year, Manchester City and Spain star Rodri triumphed over Real Madrid and Brazil forward Vinicius Junior, with England’s Jude Bellingham coming in third.

But what about this year? With no major international football apart from the CONCACAF Gold Cup, votes instead will be based off club performances for the most part.

Another interesting wrinkle to remember this year is the new, expanded FIFA Club World Cup – how will voters factor that in? At this moment we still don’t know.

As a reminder, the voting period has been changed to reflect performances across the past season of football rather than calendar year.

So even though the ceremony will take place on September 22, it will reflect the 2024-25 season, which includes the aforementioned Club World Cup.

Every Monday, TNT Sports will be bringing you our Ballon d’Or Power Rankings for both the men and women’s event.

This will be a reflection of all the action that has taken place across the season as well as what is happening in the summer.

Read on to see the third edition of the power ranking.

It was a truly remarkable season for Kvicha Kvaratskhelia, who was crowned a domestic champion with both Napoli and PSG. He also of course added the UEFA Champions League, having played a starring role in the knockouts for the Parisian giants after his move in the winter transfer window.

Kvaratskhelia ended the season with 12 goals and eight assists across all competitions for both teams and he played a key role in taking the PSG attack to another level after his move. Ultimately, though, he just does not have the numbers to end up much higher on this list.

Holders Real Madrid exited the Champions League at the quarter-final stage and finished second in La Liga behind Barcelona. However, despite some noise about his performances, Kylian Mbappe finished his first season in Spain with a mammoth 42 goals in all competitions, with four assists to boot.

However, the fact that Madrid did not win either the league or the Champions League this season means it is hard to see the Frenchman making a real push this season. Particularly because France failed to win the UEFA Nations League, losing in the final to Portugal (more on that below). Even a stellar Club World Cup campaign feels unlikely to make the difference.

No goalkeeper has won the Ballon d’Or since Lev Yashin in 1963, still the only time a shot-stopper has won the award. Will Gianluigi Donnarumma be the one who bucks that trend? No, no he will not.

As we will discuss below, whilst performances over the season are important for Ballon d’Or voting, it has also been clear over the past few years how important moments and symbolism are since Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo moved outside of Europe. To that end, a goalkeeper would have to have had a series of truly astonishing performances in both the Champions League and an international tournament. And even then they will could still be overlooked. Like the rest of his PSG team-mates he takes a little bit of a blow from the Botafogo defeat.

At one point this season Salah looked like a great bet to win the Ballon d’Or, becoming just the second African player to win the award since George Weah in 1995. Unfortunately for Salah, whilst Liverpool did win the Premier League title, they were knocked out of the Champions League by PSG in the last 16.

Achraf Hakimi ended his season with nine goals and 12 assists in all competitions, a truly astonishing return for a full-back, albeit an extremely attacking one. Similar to another player we will talk about in a bit, Hakimi is so much more than a full-back; he completely transcends the position.

However, are voters, and indeed the general public, ready for a full-back to win the Ballon d’Or? Similar to goalkeepers, the answer is probably no. However scoring goals in big games will always help. He did that in the Champions League final and in PSG’s most recent game at the 2025 Club World Cup.

Mendes did not quite match up to Hakimi in terms of numbers, but he was equally critical to PSG’s historic treble. What he does have over Hakimi for this period in voting is international triumph, thanks to Portugal winning the UEFA Nations League.

The rebirth of Raphinha has been astonishing – 34 goals and 22 assists in all competitions. Those are bonkers numbers no matter who you measure up against. In any other year, you would have to think that he would be the front-runner.

But similar to what we have discussed before, does Raphinha have those moments that you need? Yes, he scored at the end of the second leg against Inter, but that might not be remembered in the same way given Inter went on to win the semi-final.

Yes, Yamal had a poor Nations League and yes, Barcelona did not win the Champions League, or even reach the final. But despite this, Barcelona won La Liga and the Copa del Rey, as well as reaching the semi-finals of the Champions League, and Yamal was at the heart of it. The teenager finished with 18 goals and 21 assists across all competitions.

The battle for the top has to be between PSG players and really it will probably go back and forth over the next few weeks at the Club World Cup. Because of the kind of player he is and the tendency amongst footballing society to lean towards attackers and goalscorers, Dembele seems like the obvious front-runner.

After all, 33 goals and 13 assists is a record anyone would be envious of. Dembele is right there, but it does hurt him that France did not win the Nations League. Indeed in the semi-finals, three of France’s four goals came after he was taken off. Does a strong Club World Cup override that? He certainly has benefitted from missing the first couple of games of the Club World Cup.

Rodrigo Walked, only Vitinha Could Run.

Where Rodri was the anchor that held Manchester City and Spain together, Vitinha is the heartbeat of PSG and Portugal. Without him, the other organs simply cannot function.

Vitinha followed it up with a starring role as Portugal edged Spain to win the UEFA Nations League, scoring in the shootout to continue his golden summer. Right now, he is our leader in the clubhouse despite that defeat to Botafogo but things could change if things go south for PSG.

Who deserves to win this year’s Ballon d’Or prize?