Harry Kane and Rio Ngumoha during England training
Harry Kane gives some Ballon tips to Rio Ngumoha
Rio Ngumoha wanting to win the Ballon d’Or is no surprise and entirely normal, but Liverpool might fear that history will soon repeat itself.
Leaving aside the obvious candidates who have made their desire public – Your Kylian Mbappes, Your Lamine Yamals, the Vinicius Juniors of this world – an increasing number of players have openly identified the Ballon d’Or as a target.
And a great many of them are changing clubs specifically to fulfil that vision. Some seem likelier than others to do so. Will one have to eventually follow suit?
Rio Ngumoha It comes as no surprise that Ngumoha is enthused by the mere idea of scrapping with Kylian Mbappe and Ousmane Dembele after having his excellence recognised by France Football.
But contained within the outline of his Ballon d’Or career goal was a reminder of precisely how precociously phenomenal the Liverpool forward is.
“Harry Kane winning the Ballon d’Or is definitely a big thing,” he said. “It’s also helped English football now because everyone’s seen one of us win the Ballon d’Or, it is definitely encouraging many more people to want to be known as the best player in the world. For me, I would like to achieve it and I think I can do it.”
Having been born almost seven years after Michael Owen’s win, and in the same year the Ronaldo-Messi duopoly started and ultimately helped the award transcend time and space to become the holy grail for all players and a retired Rio Ferdinand, even the remarkably mature Ngumoha was always going to be besotted by the power of the Ballon.
The 18-year-old not being alive to see a Liverpool player win the thing might not bode well. But at least there is no precedent of a player leaving Anfield for that very specific reason.
Trent Alexander-Arnold Finishing 19th in the 2019 Ballon d’Or vote – and collecting more career votes than Paul Scholes in the process – planted a seed in the mind of Alexander-Arnold.
Zero points from his next and most recent shortlist appearance in 2022 helped crystallise a decision he would formalise three years later, dragging him kicking and screaming (in fluent Spanish) away from his Anfield home.
In hindsight, publicly and proudly picking a Ballon d’Or win over becoming Liverpool captain, lifting the World Cup with England or claiming a second Champions League was the first sign for the Reds that simply being the sole Scouser in their team was not enough to sate some grandiose life goals.
“I want to be the first full-back to ever do it,” he said of his Ballon d’Or ambition, adding that his desire was to be remembered as “a legend of football, someone who changed the game” with a “legacy of being the greatest right-back to have played football”.
Alexander-Arnold is currently third-choice in the position for his club, and yet to nail down the starting spot for his country.
As he himself said at his Real Madrid unveiling: “It is going to be quite hard to win the Ballon d’Or with the amount of superstars in this team.”
Even more so when a second season in Spain seems to be stuttering as much as the first.
Anthony Gordon A potent combination is already clear in Gordon’s mind, as he expounded upon during the last international break: “When preparation meets luck you get that kind of opportunity.”
Gordon “always dreamt” of the Ballon d’Or as a kid and has “never had a limit on what I can do in life,” despite spending more than a decade at Everton.
“I understand that the people who are there at some point weren’t there,” he added. “I believe anyone can achieve anything they put their mind to – they just need a lot of luck.”
In the afterglow of a formerly trophyless failed Norwich and Leicester loanee being voted the best player in the world, it isn’t difficult to grasp Gordon’s point.
It certainly seems fractionally more feasible at Barcelona than it did under Eddie Howe at Newcastle, even if it remains a pipedream.
Rayan Cherki “I want to win the Ballon d’Or and win the Champions League,” reads and sounds like the bold but feasible set of objectives Cherki laid out as a new Manchester City signing.
Yet it was actually his response to Lyon academy director Jean-Francois Vulliez when the 15-year-old was asked about what he wanted to achieve as a player, around the time Manchester United were considering an ‘unusual’ move for one of Europe’s most thrilling young talents.
The Frenchman understandably never came close to enacting that plan in a solid but unspectacular Lyon side, but the Manchester City spotlight was a specific driving factor in his £30.5m summer switch.
“When you see Rodri win the Ballon d’Or it is clear with Manchester City it is possible to do so and I am here for this,” he said in his first Etihad interview.
Manchester City only have as many Ballon d’Or wins as Blackpool, Dukla Prague and Ferencvaros, but you see his point.
JJ Gabriel Cherki has essentially realised that absurd 15-year-old potential, albeit not yet to the point of Ballon adjacence.
The fear is that Gabriel will go the other way and entirely undermine his talent by making a series of detrimental decisions.
Of course he is joining Real Madrid because of his – and his vicariously-existing father’s – “dream” to win a Ballon d’Or. Having not yet made his professional debut due to the sheer amount of time and effort required to burn quite so many bridges before school leaving age, Gabriel was only ever going to try sprinting towards individual accolades before he can walk into a team of actual adults.
Manchester United, even in their current institutionally shambolic guise, are better off out of it and deserve credit for the way they have handled him.
Pochettino Scholes Man Utd
Pochettino Scholes Man Utd