Way too early 2026 Ballon d’Or Power Rankings: Kylian Mbappe, Erling Haaland’s fast start makes them favorites

And so the 2024-25 Ballon d’Or is won. Can you really believe they gave it to that guy? Amid all that controversy. All the drama on the night too! Truly those are scenes we will never forget.

(Do you think they can tell I started writing all this in advance?)

The hometown favorite ultimately won the 2024-25 award, Osmane Dembele taking home the trophy thanks to his remarkable season leading the Paris Saint-Germain line as they rode to a historic treble and took home the Champions League, then finished as runners up in the inaugural FIFA Club World Cup as an encore.

There is, however, no jumping off the Ballon d’Or treadmill just yet. Indeed what better time could there be to pick this season’s winner than straight after last season’s prize has been awarded? We are, of course, dealing with an undersized sample of results, in fact one that is more insignificant than in 2024-25 given the World Cup looming on the horizon. If the fading of Mohamed Salah’s candidacy taught us anything it is that the narrative of individual prizes is shaped in the spring months, no matter the records that were set up to be broken in the early parts of this season.

Of course, our men’s Ballon d’Or power rankings are not in the business of predicting who might win the panel vote in September 2026, but to offer the case for who should be winning. That is a little bit harder to assess when we’re so strapped for data. Even the most active of participants early on this season might just about have cleared the 500 minute mark. It is not a lot to go off. It is not nothing either.

Add a few more predictive metrics to the list — expected goals and assists for instance — and we can at least take a first draft at who might be the best players in the world come the end of the season.

1. Kylian Mbappe, Real Madrid

Whether he can keep it up over the next 10 months is an unknowable question, but right now, Kylian Mbappe has burst out of the traps at a pace few others across the sport can keep up with. Heading into last weekend, across the Champions League and Europe’s big five leagues only one player averages more than the Frenchman’s 6.86 shots per 90 minutes and Vedat Muriqi of Mallorca is not being as discerning in his shot selection. Mbappe wasn’t just second in shots taken either, he’s averaging the second most chances created per 90 too.

Add in Saturday’s 2-0 win over Espanyol and Mbappe delivers an outstanding 0.96 non-penalty expected goals plus expected assists (npxG+xA) per 90. While his tally of seven goals is significantly swelled by penalties, it’s fair to assume that we are going to be seeing plenty from other sources over the course of the season. Xabi Alonso has formatted what appears to be a very good Madrid team around Mbappe’s qualities. That could lead to some quite remarkable things this season.

2. Erling Haaland, Manchester City

Yes, the next generation of Lionel Messi vs. Cristiano Ronaldo looks like it’s coming this season. If Mbappe isn’t going to win it then right now it looks like Erling Haaland is his nearest rival. Much like Alonso’s adjustments, Pep Guardiola has responded to his team’s past adversities by designing a gameplan tailored to his star forward. Any shot not taken by Haaland, it seems, is a bad shot. That approach is working and before Thursday’s game against Napoli he was averaging a frankly ludicrous 1.52 npxG per 90. He was underperforming that by a fair way too. He had scored five goals in four games and continued his impressive scoring form at Arsenal too.

About the only worry you’d have about a Haaland Ballon d’Or candidacy is what these goals might amount to. This column is firmly of the view that individual prizes should be awarded to the best player rather than the best player on the best team, but sheer output does need to contribute to some form of winning. The risk might be that his goals only paper over so many of Manchester City’s flaws elsewhere on the pitch and that come the World Cup Norway just aren’t a nation who can make a big impact. Still, right now, Haaland is doing all that can be expected of him.

3. Harry Kane, Bayern Munich

On this season’s performances there is a clear top tier of three and perhaps the only question you can have of Harry Kane is whether he might belong higher than third in it. After all, he is well clear as the leading scorer in Europe’s top five leagues with eight goals to his name, three of them penalties. He’s ranking pretty favorably in assists too with three. At 32 Kane might be as effective a pure final third presence as he has ever been, delivering in a big Champions League game too.

If we might briefly engage in some psephology, however, Kane’s candidacy seems deeply tied to how his teams perform. Win the Champions League and he has a chance, but the best scenario for the veteran striker is that for once he keeps himself fit going into the summer, where he makes a positive impact for England at the business end of the tournament. Win the World Cup and he might just be a lock for the rankings that really count.

4. Ousmane Dembele, Paris Saint-Germain

The best player on the best team last season had made a bright enough start to 2025-26 before familiar injury issues caught up with Ousmane Dembele. The France international could be out until well into October with a hamstring issue, a reminder that for all that his brilliant form at the start of the year might have been a function of system changes and an improved squad around him, an extended run of availability was vital in the world seeing the real Dembele. 

How much we can expect that from a player who has suffered eight separate hamstring issues since the start of 2019 should be one of the most significant questions over Dembele’s candidacy. If one thing was apparent in that run to the Champions League title, it’s that he is good enought to rank as the best player on the planet.

5. Pedri, Barcelona

If you want a sense of why Pedri is the best central midfielder in the game right now, just look at his performance in the Champions League win over Newcastle. A player who won so many admirers for the possession play of his early years can now go into a game against the hulking engine room of a top Premier League side and win more duels than anyone on the pitch. Indeed, no one in Europe’s top five leagues has recovered possession more times than Pedri.

There probably needs to be a scintilla of a doubt, given that the most important and valuable thing in football is putting the ball in the net, but it really should be possible for a player of Pedri’s quality to win the Ballon d’Or this season.

6. Lamine Yamal, Barcelona

If Lamine Yamal’s trajectory is anything like it has been so far in his career, he will win the Ballon d’Or next season. In his second full year in the Barcelona team, the 18-year-old was irresistible, deciding some of the biggest games with a few moments of brilliance. Before his injuries the signs were that he was progressing nicely, two assists and as many goals in three games.

A note of caution, however. You may remember that we noted the remarkable number of shots per 90 minutes that Mbappe was averaging. At six and two thirds, Yamal is not far behind. It’s just that a few too many of them are really rather bad. An average of 0.08 xG per shot is at the very least a coaching moment. Few players are more likely to stick bad shots in the top bins like Yamal is, but if he can wait a little longer to get into prime spots, he will doubtless buttress his case for individual glory.

7. Raphinha, Barcelona

This season there seems a distinct possibility that Barcelona’s two wing wonders split each others votes and that that is why Raphinha, who matched Cristiano Ronaldo’s record for goal involvements in a Champions League campaign, didn’t really get that close to the winner. The same might happen this season but on his current form Raphinha could well emerge as a worthy winner. The Brazilian is on three assists and two goals through five La Liga games and showed in Thursday’s win over Newcastle that he could be almost as effective off the right as he is the left.

8. Michael Olise, Bayern Munich

Is Michael Olise taking the leap? Maybe the best argument against that question is that the 23-year-old actually took it last season when he delivered 27 combined goals and assists in the Bundesliga. He has certainly picked up where he left off, giving Marc Cucurella a torrid time in the Champions League and delivering a host of goals in domestic play, where his npxG+xA is a ludicrous 1.1 per 90.

For Olise, as well as every other Bayern Munich and PSG player on this list, that output probably needs to transfer into the European game for it to feel like more than empty calories. That or the World Cup. Given that Didier Deschamps has trusted Olise in a central attacking role for France, that could be eminently plausible.

9. Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Paris Saint-Germain

Take your pick of PSG players to add to this list. It might be Vitinha, the star man in a midfield full of hyper talent, or perhaps Desire Doue takes another leap forward. The most obvious candidate, however, is Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, who spent most of last season very clearly proving that he makes significant contributions to winning teams. He would probably need to step up and lead an attack in Dembele’s absence but everything we know about the former Napoli man is that is something he has no trouble doing.

A relatively limited run of minutes in Ligue 1 means Kvaratskhelia has ground to make up early on and there’s perhaps an argument to be made that the early season returns haven’t been enough for the brilliant Georgian. Consider this then, to be a guarantee of brilliance to come. Anyway they’ll have to pry these power rankings from my cold dead fingers before I don’t make room for Kvaradona.

10. Mohamed Salah, Liverpool

By dint of being this column’s pick of the best player in men’s football last season, Mohamed Salah keeps his place in the top 10 for the time being. He has earned the right to ease his way into a campaign that will see him jam an Africa Cup of Nations and, in all likelihood, a World Cup around his Liverpool commitments. It would, however, be disingenuous to suggest that there haven’t been signs of a dip from the 33-year-old, who eased up in 2024-25 when it became apparent there were no more trophies for him to win.

Salah’s npxG has gone from 0.49 per 90 to 0.09 in the Premier League, his xA from 0.24 to 0.14. Not all of that can be explained by the improvement of his supporting cast. He is a player with over 500 games in the top five leagues and European competitions, who has just signed a lucrative new contract. We know what can happen to that sort of player. For those of Salah’s talent it is better to be too late than too early in labelling this a decline moment, but if we were looking for signs of the drop starting, this is what we might be seeing.