Unlike many soccer fans, I believe that the winner of the  Ballon D’or was deserved, but the rankings for top five were way off. The official top five consists of 1) Ousmane Dembélé: (France, Paris Saint-Germain) 2) Lamine Yamal: (Spain, Barcelona) 3) Vitinha: (Portugal, Paris Saint-Germain) 4) Mohamed Salah: (Egypt, Liverpool) 5) Raphinha: (Brazil, Barcelona). 

I strongly think that Lamine Yamal is an amazing player. Doing what he is doing at 18 is impressive, but his 2024/25 season was not good enough for him to get second place. Lamine had a 22 g/a, scoring only 9 goals and having 13 assists, if he wasn’t a teen nobody would care.. The media cares so much just because he is a teenager if he was an adult the media would call him a flop. 

My personal top five would be 1) Ousmane Dembélé: (France, Paris Saint-Germain) 2)  Raphinha: (Brazil, Barcelona). 3) Kylian Mbappe: (France, Real Madrid) 4) Mohamed Salah: (Egypt, Liverpool) 5) Vitinha: (Portugal, Paris Saint-Germain). The Ballon D’or should be based on trophies and on solo performance, not the whole team. The award ceremony already gives out an award to the best team in the world.  

For Dembele and Raphinha being one and two is simple, both of their teams won the league with them leading their teams with both 50 + G/A. Mbappe at three due to having a 56 g/a season but did not win any major trophies, salah with a 47 g/a winning the league he played. Now Vitinha did not have a crazy g/a, with only 16, but he had the midfield on locks helping set up an attack and tracking back when needed to stop a counter attack .