As we prepare to learn who this year’s recipient of the Ballon d’Or will be, it is worth reflecting on how much its parameters have changed in the last couple of years. The decade of Lionel Messi’s and Cristiano Ronaldo’s dominance of the trophy had transformed its meaning forever. Nobody else won it between prime Kaká lifting it in 2007 after AC Milan’s UEFA Champions League win and it being awarded to Luka Modrić in 2018 for his role in Croatia’s run to the World Cup final in that year.

Going back before Kaká, the award used to be about a feeling, an approximation of relative greatness and a sense of a single player who captured the zeitgeist more than any other in that calendar year, like Fabio Cannavaro when Italy sensationally won the 2006 FIFA World Cup against the looking backdrop of Calciopoli, for example.

Messi and Ronaldo changed all that. If heated discussions of who was ‘the best’ of any era eventually progressed to an invitation to put your medals on the table, the two biggest superstars of the 21st century took that line of thinking to and beyond its natural conclusion. Their brilliance was so blinding and their statistical achievements so mind-boggling that numbers and trophies were really the only way to separate them, and to crown the best of any particular year.

The Ballon d’Or has regrouped since then and is settling into a middle ground between its old self and what it became in the Messi/Ronaldo years (even if Argentina’s genius won it thrice more post-Modrić’s triumph). We are now decidedly past the Messi/Ronaldo domination, as if the 2022 World Cup final bookended the story, and this year we have the most open field in recent memory.

Vinícius Júnior (Real Madrid CF / Brazil)

A report in Madrid-based daily As this week trumpeted that Real Madrid CF are internally so sure that their Brazilian superstar will win it that they ”take for granted” that the 24-year-old has it in the bag already. He makes a convincing case after his huge role in a team that won La Liga losing only once and then went on to lift the UEFA Champions League/European Cup again, extending their record of wins to 15 – and he scored the clincher in the Wembley final at the end of a third successive 20-goal season.

Quite apart from ticking all the boxes on the eye test every weekend Vini has become a totemic footballer, from making a mockery of the pressure of his €45million pricetag when he arrived in the capital as a teenager with next to no first-team experience in 2018, to dealing with a catalogue of racist abuse with strength and dignity. Despite an unfulfilling Copa America – he was banned for Brazil’s quarter-final exit – Vini is arguably the footballer of this and probably most other years.

Jude Bellingham (Real Madrid CF / England)

Had 2023/24 finished at the halfway stage, Bellingham would surely have been a shoo-in for the Ballon d’Or. He had already been prodigy, best player and leader (and almost Bundesliga title winner) at Borussia Dortmund, with the maturity to excel in a variety of midfield positions. The sudden exit of 2022 winner Karim Benzema from the Bernabéu gave Bellingham the chance to write a Roy Of The Rovers opening chapter to his own Real Madrid CF story, being pushed into an advanced role and ending up his debut season in Spain with 23 goals.

The second half of the season was a bit more of a learning curve as he dealt with closer marking, rough treatment and repeated attempts to wind him up from opponents, and he didn’t score in the UEFA Champions League knockout rounds. It wasn’t that he didn’t play well, it was that he had set himself unsustainable standards, and he battled through plain fatigue as well (and was still able, even below peak physical condition, to pull rabbits out of hats like his extraordinary equaliser for England against Slovenia in the Euros). Maybe – with stats weighing so heavily on modern Ballon d’Or consideration – last season was Bellingham’s best chance to win the trophy, but that tougher end to last term will make him a better player in the long run.

Kylian Mbappé (Paris Saint-Germain / Real Madrid CF / France)

In any normal year, Mbappé’s candidacy would be a very serious one having won another league title and reached the semi-finals of both UEFA Champions League and UEFA EURO 2024. The statistics are convincing as well, with 27 in 24 Ligue 1 starts (plus 7 assists) for Paris Saint-Germain, not to mention 8 in 12 in the UEFA Champions League, before authoring a good start to his long-awaited Real Madrid CF career.

This has, however, not been a normal year for Mbappé, nor is he an ordinary player. His (and France’s) disappointing Euros, stymied by lack of match rhythm and a facial injury, will probably define his 2024, as well as his ongoing dispute with PSG which cost him the fluency to succeed in Germany in the summer. We should really be looking at how remarkable it is that he put up the numbers he did with these clouds looming over him. It is hard to believe there will not be further opportunities for Mbappé to make the Ballon d’Or his.

Rodri (Manchester City / Spain)

If ever there was a player to be this year’s Modrić, then it was Rodri. His winning goal in 2023’s UEFA Champions League final will always be a career highlight but it was neither indicative of the greatest strengths in his game nor, perhaps, even destined to be the absolute pinnacle of his footballing story, given his talent and the company he keeps on the field.

Until a recent ACL injury brought his 2024 to a grinding halt it had been a sensational year. City have been borderline unbeatable with Rodri in their line-up – he last lost a Premier League game in February 2023 – with his ability to retain the ball and his range of passing supplemented in recent years with a willingness to bring it into the final third. He was also a key part of Spain’s glorious Euro 2024 winning campaign (even though he was forced off in the final), with his leadership key in a younger team than previous successful Spanish vintages. As we sit in the rare vacuum of not being quite sure who the world’s best player is, this year would be Rodri’s best chance of the award.

Erling Haaland (Manchester City / Norway)

It tells you everything about the high watermarks that Haaland has set that his apparently difficult second season at Manchester City – where he was subject to far greater scrutiny and suffered a series of minor injuries – still yielded 38 goals and another Premier League title. The sticks occasionally used to beat him are ridiculous. In the post-gegenpressing era the game needs strikers who don’t wear themselves out with over-involvement in the game, keeping themselves fresh to exercise ultimate clarity in front of goal. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Mauro Icardi, for example, have often used this template over the past decade. Haaland does it to a far higher level than them or anyone else.

City may have seen another treble slip through their grasp last season but still achieved highly, as did their centre-forward, who is a guarantee of goals and an innovator in terms of finishing. He also broke Norway’s all-time scoring record in 2024, going along at pretty much a goal per game, as he has for much of his club career. This might not have been his year to get the big award but he will stay in the mix for years to come, the closest to those Messi/Ronaldo statistical highs of any player of his generation.