Image: MichaelEmilio via Wikimedia Commons
On Monday the annual Ballon d’Or awards ceremony took place. This was the 68th edition of the event and it has certainly moved on a long way from its humble origins. Inaugural winner of the main, eponymous prize, Sir Stanley Matthews, was given his award in “the clubhouse in Blackpool” according to the Sunday Times. That was in 1956 and in 1967 Florian Albert, of Ferencvaros and Hungary, was given the award in his own kitchen!
Fast-forward to 2024 and we have a glitzy awards ceremony in a plush Parisian theatre and opera house, plus several more prizes up for grabs aside from the men’s Ballon d’Or. Among the newer prizes is the Kopa Trophy. This is given to the best young player around and named after French ace Raymond Kopa, who came third to Matthews in 1956, joint third a year later before finally winning the Ballon d’Or in 1958.
The Kopa Trophy was first awarded in 2018, the same year that the Ballon d’Or Feminin, or women’s Ballon d’Or was handed out. In 2024 we saw a huge surprise in the men’s prize, with Man City and Spain defensive midfielder beating Vinicius Junior, who had been the odds-on favourite. However, the Kopa honour predictably went to another Spanish star, Barca’s Euro 2024 sensation Lamine Yamal. And it was a Spain hat-trick because, very predictably, Aitana Bonmati won the Ballon d’Or Feminin.
Brilliant Bonmati Makes it Two
Barcelona’s sensational midfielder Bonmati won the prize in 2023 and defended her title in 2024. She had been the overwhelming victor in 2023, amassing a massive 266 votes to finish well clear of Chelsea’s Aussie attacker Sam Kerr (87) and her Barca teammate Salma Paralluelo (49). In winning back to back Ballons d’Ors she emulated the feat of another teammate too, with the brilliant Alexia Putellas taking glory in both 2022 and 2021.
A serious knee injury meant Putellas missed almost all of the 2022/23 season and part of the following campaign too. However, both club and country managed to make light of her ACL injury – devastating as it must have been for the player – and continued to dominate. The sensational performances of Bonmati were central to that.
There are many similarities between the two on the pitch, though Bonmati is four years younger than her club colleague. Both are flexible midfielders who can do a bit of everything but love to score and create goals. Both have been at Barca for over a decade, though Putellas was signed from Levante whereas Bonmati came through the famed La Masia, not making her first-team bow until 2015/16 and only really beginning to establish herself as a regular over the next few campaigns.
Bonmati a Class Apart
England’s Lionesses have been brilliant over the past few years, winning the Euros on home soil in 2022, but they were well and truly outclassed when they met Spain in the World Cup final in 2023. The score was only 1-0 but the eventual champions dominated throughout and Bonmati was at the heart of that.
Right now she plays the game at a level no other player can match and she was honoured with the Golden Ball at the recent World Cup, given to the tournament’s best overall player. She scored three goals and added two assists, being her team’s joint-best performer on both metrics.
Her technical ability, vision, football IQ and balance are supreme, whilst her ability to play almost anywhere in the “front six” is also hugely useful at tournaments. Pep Guardiola compared her to Andres Iniesta but that is, with all due respect to the simply outstanding Iniesta, doing Bonmati down.
Her elegance, low centre of gravity and all-round technical ability mean she is more akin to Lionel Messi in our opinion, both in terms of her style and how good she is compared to everyone else. Her goalscoring record seems to be improving, even when she is not always played in an as advanced role as she might be. With her 27th birthday months away (18th of January 2025) she should really be entering her very best years now and we can all look forward to the privilege of seeing her play.
Stats and Honours
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Whilst watching Bonmati glide across the turf and render three defenders redundant with one sublime touch or turn is a joy to behold, she backs up her elegance with goals and assists. At the time of writing she boasts 96 goals in 270 games for Barca and a further 26 in 65 for her nation.
Given how young she was when she began, those numbers are more impressive, especially if we drill down into them a little deeper. For example, when wearing her national shirt she played seven times in her first two seasons without scoring, then a further 12 times in 2019 that brought just four goals.
Since those four strikes in 19 caps, she has managed 22 goals in the next 46, including five in five in 2024. Her first goal at international level was against England in the glamorous city of Swindon in 2019, around 18 months after she made her senior debut.
Similarly her goalscoring at club level is also trending upwards. In her first six seasons her best return was 13 but in 2021/22 she notched 18 goals for Barca, and then 19 in each of the two campaigns that followed. She is now almost a goal-every-other-game player and that is a brilliant return considering she is chiefly a midfielder.
Her excellence has helped her teams to all sorts of glory. We have already mentioned her win at the World Cup, whilst she also made the final of age-group major tournaments with Spain an incredible six times, winning two of those. With her club she has five championship wins, six Copa de la Reina victories and most impressive of all, three Champions League titles. She is the best player in the world and a joy to watch, and we expect that to be the case for several years to come.