\n<\/p>\n
Speaking a few days after watching Kylian Mbappe score a stunning hat-trick to fire Real Madrid to a thumping 4-1 victory over Real Sociedad on August 26, Jose Mourinho was asked who he feels should win <\/span>the 2026 Ballon d’Or<\/span>. In trademark style, he took the opportunity to challenge mainstream opinions about the award.<\/span><\/p>\n “The best players in the world, there are two, three or four of them, and we know who they are: they\u2019re here,” he said. “For me, there is one who, individually, made history this summer.”<\/span><\/p>\n That last line was of course a reference to Mbappe, who became the top goal-scorer in World Cup history after winning the 2026 tournament’s Golden Boot with 10 strikes in eight matches for France. However, the Real Madrid superstar is considered to be behind the likes of Harry Kane, Lamine Yamal, Rodri and Michael Olise in the running for the Ballon d’Or, because they all won major trophies last season.<\/span><\/p>\n The three leading figures in Paris Saint-Germain’s run to a second successive Champions League crown, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Ousmane Dembele and Vitinha, are also being highly favoured, but Mourinho believes the widely accepted voting process is fundamentally flawed.<\/span><\/p>\n “You cannot give the Ballon d\u2019Or to a player simply because he won the Champions League or the World Cup,” the Real Madrid boss added. “The Ballon d\u2019Or should go to one of those players who, when they retire, will be missed for ever. [Diego] Maradona, Ronaldinho, Ronaldo Nazario, Cristiano Ronaldo, [Lionel] Messi, [Zinedine] Zidane. If we want to reward the Champions League, then give it to Luis Enrique. For the Spanish national team, give it to [Luis] De la Fuente. The best player in the world is something else and he is neither at PSG nor in the Spain team.”<\/span><\/p>\n Mourinho is absolutely right that the hallowed Golden Ball should mainly reward individual brilliance instead of being so heavily tied to collective silverware. In modern times, the vote has become a popularity contest rather than an assessment of pure talent and impact. But he is <\/span>wrong<\/em><\/i> to put Mbappe in the No.1 slot based on the latter criteria, and to suggest that the Frenchman deserves to be mentioned in the same bracket as so many true legends of the sport.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Speaking a few days after watching Kylian Mbappe score a stunning hat-trick to fire Real…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25526,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}