If Vinicius Jr. or Rodri win the Ballon d'Or, the Yamal era can begin

Spain's continued dominance in global football will be underlined this week when the longlist of this year's candidates for the men's Ballon d'Or is announced. The Ballon d'Or will then be plated in 24-carat gold in Paris at the end of October when the winner is announced. The winner and most of the top five will either be Spanish or play their club in LaLiga.

Whether it's nationality or education, nature or nurture, Spanish football is the cradle of everything that is exciting, intelligent, uplifting and ultimately winning in world football. And it has been that way for decades. Yes, boo, bad luck for the Premier League – it's official.

The top two will be Vinícius Júnior and Rodri, while the next best in class will be Jude Bellingham, Dani Carvajal, Toni Kroos and Lamine Yamal, a mix of those who either grew up with the Spanish way (possess the ball, do intelligent things with it, repeat it ad infinitum) or had to move to LaLiga to flourish and be duly recognised.

Following a recent change introduced by the French organisers of the Ballon d'Or, the judges (nominated football reporters from the top 100 FIFA nations) will only have to consider the 2023/24 season. However, the criteria sent to these venerable voters make for interesting reading; trophies won, for example, are not explicitly mentioned.

The organisers (a consortium of L'Equipe, France Football and UEFA) want the 100 reporters to consider the following factors when choosing their top five players:

1. Individual performance, determination and impact
2. Collective performance and track record
3rd class and fair play

I will declare my colours here and now (although I have no right to vote). I will not moan whether Rodri or Vinícius wins – and it will be either one or the other.

My personal choice would be Rodri by far. He is by far the most complete player in any position in the world. And this is proven not only by statistics (74 games without defeat in a 90-minute game for Manchester City between February 2023 and May 2024), an unstoppable series of Premier League titles and consecutive international trophies with Spain last year, but also by his exceptional football intelligence. Leadership, goals, inexhaustible stamina, vision, technical excellence, heading ability, articulation – Rodrigo Hernández has it all.

But I suspect that Rodri, like the teen star Yamal, who I'm about to talk about, might simply be one of the “victims” of this process, and if that's the case, I'd feel very sorry for both of them.

The reason for this is that players in Rodri's position almost never win this award. And players who dart, inspire, invent, score, create and terrify defenders, as Vinícius repeatedly does, almost always win this award.

Since the Ballon d'Or was first awarded in 1956, there have been 45 winners from 20 different countries. Only two, Matthias Sammer and Lothar Matthäus, have played a role remotely similar to that of Rodri. Sammer was the last of these two imperious, ferocious German liberos/midfielders to win the trophy, and that was 28 years ago.

The case for Vinícius is obvious. And although the Ballon d'Or is actually supposed to be awarded for its ten months starting in August 2023, anyone who has read my columns here about the Brazilian striker over the past five years will know how much I adore this man who is magic in a bottle.

If “record” is to guide voters, then Vinícius has just that: 12 major club trophies at just 24 years of age, plus a 100% goalscoring rate and a win rate in two Champions League finals. And since the man standing on that podium shouldn't do so solely on the basis of trophies won the previous season, Vinícius probably has the edge over Rodri on that point.

For nearly two decades, the Ballon d'Or has been dominated by Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo because they stand out from every other man in the entire history of the sport, bar four or five other men. But now that neither of them will ever win it again, we are moving into an era where your football will probably have to be “clippable” to add vote-winning sparkle to your season. By that, I mean that all that glitters will be gold.

For fans and analysts of all ages and experience, for television producers, social media fanatics and (seriously, let's admit it) journalists or editors, it's much easier to take a clip of a trick, assist or goal and either broadcast it or post it online and watch it spread around the world – viral is the cruder, uglier word for it.

The kind of brilliance that Rodri embodies – qualities that still justify the highest transfer fees, the highest salaries and the monstrous calibre that continues to bring trophies to players like him and their clubs for as long as football exists – is just a tiny bit harder to capture in a 10-second clip. How much does he care? I think very little.

I spent half an hour with Rodri during Euro 2024, interviewing him for a UEFA Masterclass video. He is a man who knows his position, his role, his own qualities, his learning process under City manager Pep Guardiola and his chances to continue winning major trophies. He is blessed with the ability not only to impose these qualities but also to explain them to help others (players, journalists, fans) understand them and one day he will be able to lead the club of his choice either as a coach, technical director or president.

But he's less likely to tunnel a full-back, twist, turn, earn admiring 'oohs' and 'ahs' from an adoring crowd before delivering a blistering assist or firing into the top corner with the outside of his right foot. That's your 'X' factor, which could well put Vinícius ahead in the voting in the next month or two.

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How fate created a photo that captures “the beginning of two legends”

Meet photographer Joan Monfort, who photographed young Barcelona star Lionel Messi posing with baby Lamine Yamal for a charity calendar in 2007.

And that brings me finally to Yamal. If you apply boxing's pound for pound term to the 17-year-old, he is about as deserving as Rodri or Vinícius in terms of receiving an award that, despite its many flaws, remains one of the surest indicators of greatness.

I know, I know… now that I've established that this award refers to last season and not the weeks since the new season started, I'm cheating by mentioning the fact that there is no one in the world more exciting, uplifting and amazing than Yamal right now.

I am also convinced that he will definitely win the Junior Ballon d'Or – called the Kopa Award in honour of Real Madrid's 1958 Ballon d'Or winner, Raymond Kopa – at the same ceremony in Paris where the main prize will be awarded on Monday 28 October.

I say 'dead certain' because that's how I see it, although I do expect there to be one anomaly, namely that Bellingham (the current Kopa holder) will knock Yamal out of the top three for the Ballon d'Or, but will be overtaken by Barcelona's exceptional prodigy for the Kopa trophy – which the England star was still eligible for last season.

Let me give you some context. You've certainly seen how Yamal turned the record books for Barcelona and Spain upside down last season by doing many things before Pele, Messi, Ronaldo, Johan Cruyff or pretty much any other legend you care to name. Then he championed exciting, attacking and inventive football during a European Championship when too many top international teams and star players were fixated on not losing.

This season, Lamine has shrugged off the effects of a violent attack on his father and continued to carry Barcelona's first team on his shoulders, despite having just turned 17 in the summer.

The youngest player in the entire glorious history of the Ballon d'Or to ever finish in the top three was Ronaldo Nazario in 1996 at the age of 20 years and three months, narrowly surpassing the only other 20-year-olds to have made it to the podium: Portugal's Eusébio (1962), Italy's Gianni Rivera (1963) and Messi (2007).

Now, Yamal is blessed with the same kind of football intelligence as Rodri – a little, whirring, ultra-sharp, number-crunching computer where the rest of us have the frontal lobe of our brains. But, boy, is he just as “vulnerable” as Vinícius.

If things continue like this, next year he will be by far the youngest player to ever stand on the Ballon d'Or podium – perhaps even the youngest winner ever. This year, the win probably came a little too early for the boy who had just turned 16 at the start of the season to make it into the top three on the podium. What a pity.

Anyway, these are my passionate views. The list will be released on Wednesday and the discussions will continue long, long after the winner is announced on October 28. Who are you putting your money on? Who has captured your heart and who would you choose if you had one?