The best player in the world hasn't been nominated for the Ballon d'Or

21 Sep 2026 07:15 CDT | Updated: 21 Sep 2026 07:35 CDT | 4 min read

Raphinha, Lamine Yamal, Kylian Mbappe, Ballon d'Or — © IMAGO

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When the winner of the 2026 Ballon d’Or is named, he won’t be the best player in the world. That’s a guarantee. It’s a certainty because the best in the world has not even made the 30-man shortlist for the prize.

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Forget Lamine Yamal, Harry Kane and Kylian Mbappe, Raphinha has spent the last month putting up outstanding numbers for Barcelona and yet is nowhere to be seen among the nominees.

As if hammering home his point, he has delivered two hat-tricks in the space of a week, ensuring that Robert Lewandowski is long forgotten at Camp Nou.

Last Wednesday, he scored a treble against Racing Santander in a 7-2 victory, and although two of those may have come from the penalty spot, any doubters of his quality were silenced when he followed that up with a hat-trick against Sevilla.

And this was not just any hat-trick. It was a perfect hat-trick. Raphinha opened the scoring with a smart right-footed finish into the bottom corner, grabbed his second with a predatory headed finish from close range and completed his three-goal haul with a delightful left-footed dink over the keeper.

There is no one - not Kane, not Yamal, not Mbappe – who is playing on his level at the moment. In eight games this season, he has scored 14 goals (12 in La Liga and two in the Champions League).

"It's a joke that he's not even nominated for the Ballon d'Or," Sevilla head coach Luis Garcia said in the post-game news conference.

"He is a match-winner; that's why I don't believe in these prizes. He does everything."

For Raphinha to be overlooked even for a nomination is insulting and damages the reputation of such a prize. The merits of the Ballon d'Or have always been political and voting has shifted further into that realm over the past decade, but some of the nominations, when compared to Raphinha, are inexplicable.

Did Sadio Mane of Al-Nassr and Julian Quinones of Al-Qadsiah really perform better than Raphinha over the past year? The likes of Bruno Fernandes and Mbappe enjoyed individually outstanding campaigns but didn't win a single thing with their countries or clubs.

Raphina has 14 goals from 18 shots on target (77% conversion rate), this is unprecedented levels we’re witnessing.
— SG (@04gully) September 19, 2026

Ferran Torres, once of Barcelona but now of PSG, is nominated despite having fewer goal contributions in many more games. He's there because, of course, he scored the winner in the World Cup final.

Meanwhile, Raphinha won La Liga with Barcelona and recorded 29 goal contributions in 33 games. And this was achieved despite battling injury issues.

But his move to centre-forward this season, due to Lewandowski’s exit and the club’s failure to land Julian Alvarez, has been transformative.

What was initially a temporary fix has turned into a masterstroke. He has displayed a clinical edge to his game that is missing from the arsenal of likes of his team-mate Yamal and his Brazil colleague Vinicius Junior.

While it’s true that the Ballon d’Or is based on the merits of last season up until the World Cup final, Raphinha has been head and shoulders above his peers since then.

But while he failed to make an impact in North America this summer due to injury, his level has been such that it will leave those Ballon d’Or voters red faced that the player who is currently the best in the world won’t be in attendance, never mind in the running to win.