The two most successful players in Ballon d\u2019Or history have won the award a combined 12 times since 2008. Prior to Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo\u2019s duopoly, however, Ballon d\u2019Or voting provided a catalogue of different winners. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Karim Benzema became the 12th<\/sup> Ballon d\u2019Or winner of the 21st<\/sup> century in October 2022. Let\u2019s take a look at every player to win the sport\u2019s most prestigious award over the last 22 years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Lu\u00eds Figo won the Ballon d\u2019Or in 2000, largely for his performances with Barcelona in the first part of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was an eventful year for the Portuguese, as months prior to his Ballon d\u2019Or win, he moved from Barcelona to Real Madrid for a world-record fee, becoming the focal point of an incredibly hostile Clasico rivalry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Surprisingly, Figo was just the third Real Madrid player to win the award. It was also an unusual year of Ballon d\u2019Or voting as Figo came out on top despite not winning any major team trophies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Already a world-renowned star, Michael Owen had just turned 22 years old when he won the 2001 Ballon d\u2019Or.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Owen starred as Liverpool won an FA Cup, League Cup and UEFA Cup treble in 2000-01, scoring crucial goals \u2013 including a hat-trick against Germany \u2013 and proving himself as one of the best finishers on the planet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Chester native followed in the footsteps of Stanley Matthews, Bobby Charlton and Kevin Keegan to become the fourth Englishman to win the Ballon d\u2019Or.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over two decades later, no other English player has topped the voting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Five years after his first, Ronaldo Naz\u00e1rio won his second Ballon d\u2019Or in 2002. Winner of the Golden Shoe and Silver Ball as Brazil won the World Cup, O Fen\u00f4meno bounced back from major injury issues to reassert himself among the sport\u2019s elite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like Figo, Ronaldo\u2019s Ballon d\u2019Or year also featured a blockbuster transfer to the Santiago Bernabeu. He only narrowly pipped teammate Roberto Carlos to the award, however, with four Brazilians placing in the top 12 in voting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A runner-up in the Champions League and Serie A winner in 2003, Pavel Nedved collected a haul of individual honours, including Serie A Footballer of the Year and the Ballon d\u2019Or. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Nedved was the first Czech player to win the award since Josef Masopust in 1962, and the sixth different Juventus player.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nedved isn\u2019t the flashiest of Ballon d\u2019Or winners, but his combination of supreme technical ability and tireless work rate was invaluable to Juventus, as it was for Lazio before. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Milan had won the Champions League in 2003, when Andriy Shevchenko finished fourth in the voting. In 2003-04, he top scored in Serie A as Rossoneri won the Scudetto, and he scored four goals in the Champions League as they reached the quarter-finals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Shevchenko pipped Deco, a Champions League winner with Porto, and Ronaldinho. Following Greece\u2019s historic success in the Euros, Theodoros Zagorakis finished fifth. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Having had to settle for third in 2004, Ronaldinho was top of the podium in 2005 finishing far clear of Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard in second and third respectively. This was the last time any English player finished in the top three of Ballon d\u2019Or voting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ronaldinho won the 2004-05 La Liga title with Barcelona, and was on his way to another spectacular campaign at the start of 2005-06, which ended with a second La Liga and a Champions League triumph. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One the sport\u2019s greatest entertainers, the Brazilian was a landslide winner with 33 first place votes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s not often defensive players are in Ballon d\u2019Or consideration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fabio Cannavaro bucked that trend in 2006 following Italy\u2019s World Cup win, where he was given the nickname \u2018Il Muro di Berlino\u2019 by the Italian fans. He became the first defensive player to hold the trophy aloft since Matthias Sammer in 1996.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Following the World Cup win, the impacts of Calciopoli pushed Cannavaro to leave Juventus for Real Madrid in the summer of 2006. He was named Serie A Footballer of the Year in 2006, and went on to win La Liga in 2006-07. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Milan avenged their 2005 Champions League final loss to Liverpool in the summer of 2007, with Kak\u00e1 starring throughout the run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Brazilian was peerless in 2007, finishing as top scorer in the Champions League and dazzling in domestic action. He was also named Serie A Footballer of the Year for a second time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elegant, mobile and a perfect technician, Kak\u00e1 was a joy to watch at his peak. It is fitting that the Gama native preceded the decade-long Messi-Ronaldo by beating both of them to the Ballon d\u2019Or with a massive share of the vote. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Cristiano Ronaldo won the first of his five Ballons d\u2019Or in 2008 off the back of a Champions League win with Manchester United. Ronaldo was a contender for the award over the next decade-plus, ultimately winning it 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2017. The final three aligned with three more Champions League triumphs with Real Madrid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Messi is the only player in the history of the award to win it more often than Ronaldo. The former Juventus striker is also the third Portuguese winner of all-time, following Eusebio and Lu\u00eds Figo. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ronaldo went back-to-back twice — only six other players have ever won consecutive Ballons d\u2019Ors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Messi began his dominance of the Ballon d\u2019Or in 2009, winning the award in four consecutive seasons. That stretch alone made him the most successful player in the award\u2019s history, and a lengthy battle with Cristiano Ronaldo continued through the 2010s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Messi was a runner-up to Ronaldo in 2008, as he was again in 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2017. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The diminutive Argentine won his fifth in 2015, however, adding a sixth in 2019 and a seventh in 2021 to leave him two clear of Ronaldo and four ahead of anyone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Overall, Messi was a top-two Ballon d\u2019Or finisher for 10 straight years. He is surprisingly the only Argentine to win the award, but his tally alone means Argentina has produced the joint-most Ballon d\u2019Or wins with the Netherlands, France Portugal and Germany. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Luka Modric became Croatia\u2019s first Ballon d\u2019Or winner in 2018, and the first Croatian to feature in the top three of voting since Davor \u0160uker placed second behind Zinedine Zidane in 1998. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Modric had long been in the shadow of Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale and others during Real Madrid\u2019s Champions League wins in the 2010s, but that all changed in 2018 as Los Blancos were crowned champions of Europe yet again and Modric won the World Cup Golden Ball after leading Croatia to the final. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Much like Modric, Karim Benzema was integral and overlooked at Real Madrid for a long period. With Ronaldo departing, Benzema was able to take centre stage, and he delivered in a big way as Real won La Liga and the Champions League in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Los Blancos defied the odds to defeat Liverpool, Manchester City, Chelsea and PSG in the knockout rounds of Europe\u2019s premier club competition with Benzema scoring 15 goals in the process. He was every bit as impressive in La Liga, winning Best Player and Pichichi Trophy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The 2022 Ballon d\u2019Or was the first time since 2006 that neither Ronaldo or Messi finished in the top three as Benzema followed Zinedine Zidane, Jean-Pierre Papin, Michel Platini and Raymond Kopa to become the fifth Frenchman to win the award. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The two most successful players in Ballon d\u2019Or history have won the award a combined 12 times since 2008. Prior to Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo\u2019s duopoly, however, Ballon d\u2019Or voting provided a catalogue of different winners. Karim Benzema became the 12th Ballon d\u2019Or winner of the 21st century in October 2022. Let\u2019s take a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":28074,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[638],"tags":[643],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/betting.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/betting.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/betting.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betting.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betting.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/betting.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25746,"href":"https:\/\/betting.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515\/revisions\/25746"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betting.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/betting.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betting.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betting.com\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Lu\u00eds Figo – 2000<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Michael Owen – 2001<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Ronaldo Naz\u00e1rio – 2002<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Pavel Nedved – 2003<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Andriy Shevchenko – 2004<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Ronaldinho – 2005<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Fabio Cannavaro – 2006<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Kak\u00e1 – 2007<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Cristiano Ronaldo – 2008, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Lionel Messi – 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2019, 2021<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Luka Modric – 2018<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Karim Benzema – 2022<\/h2>\n\n\n\n