Real Madrid Star Kylian Mbappe Makes Honest Ballon D'or Claim

Next month, the 25/26 Ballon D’or ceremony will take place in London, England. There is a hope that there will be a Real Madrid player win the award for the first time since Karim Benzema for his body of work back in the 22/3 season.

One Los Blancos player who will hope to be winning the award is Kylian Mbappe, who was the top scorer in La Liga (25 goals, 17 NPG), the UEFA Champions League (15 goals, 12 NPG), and the FIFA World Cup (10 goals, nine NPG).

Well, certainly according to the player himself. Indeed so, as when speaking to L’Equipe (via TheMadridZone) Mbappe has admitted that he deserves to win the Ballon D’or: “I'd vote for myself.

It's an individual award, we need to see what the player did individually .

People saying I went trophyless? I've never seen a single Ballon d'Or winner that ticked every single box of the criteria.

Has any player ever won the Ballon d'Or unanimously? No. Which means there's always someone who thought the player doesn't deserve it. Being the best scorer in World Cup history, that's something that sticks in people's minds. 

Being the top scorer of all the biggest competitions, where the best players play, the UCL, the World Cup, I don't know if anyone did it before. I believe that making history should always be rewarded.

So when you look at my arguments, when you look at what the other players did this year, I'd say yeah I wouldn't be robbing anybody if I win it.

But I understand people who disagree, this is not a dictatorship.”

Interesting quotes from Mbappe. Very honest. You can tell that he backs himself. That he strongly believes in himself. And that is good. If you don’t believe in yourself, why and how would anybody else believe in you?

However, when you numb it down. It feels a stretch. He scored 17 non penalty goals in La Liga, fewer than Vedat Muriqi, whom was playing for a relegated Mallorca side.

His 12 non penalty goals in the Champions League was a solid return, and he scored in both legs against Bayern Munich. So listen, fair play. But six of those non penalty goals did come up against Kairat Almaty and Olympiacos in the league phase.

At the World Cup, he was clearly phenomenal, though two of his goals came in the dead rubber third placed play off against England. He failed to score against Spain in the semi finals. Admittedly, Harry Kane also failed in the semi finals, but he scored a hell of a lot more goals over the season.

So, for me, Mbappe should be right up there, a podium place would be fairly justified overall. No problems with that. But he did not do enough to win the Ballon D’or over someone like Kane for my money. But well, let’s wait and see next month.