Harry Kane v Lamine Yamal at Wembley is the final twist in a bitter Ballon d’Or race

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Voting for the Ballon d’Or closes next week, and by a quirk of the fixture list it just so happens that the two favourites for the award meet at Wembley on Saturday night. England’s brave bronze men take on Spain’s World Cup winners, and beyond the chance to take charge of 2026/27 Uefa Nations League 1C, the game offers Harry Kane and Lamine Yamal one last opportunity to woo swing voters.

One hundred journalists from around the world will decide who receives the trophy at a London ceremony next month, and they have spent the past few days being told who to vote for. Thomas Tuchel says it must be Kane, Hansi Flick thinks it should be his star Yamal, Jose Mourinho thinks his best player Kylian Mbappe should win, Inter Miami owner David Beckham is backing Lionel Messi, and reigning orb-holder Ousmane Dembele says the trophy must stay in Paris.

The biggest clubs now choose a candidate and Rodri recently revealed that, despite him being crowned the World Cup’s best player, Barcelona are backing Yamal. Meanwhile, Mbappe sent a not-so-subtle message to the 20-strong electorate of Africa. “I’ve always felt so loved every time I’ve set foot on the African continent,” he said. “I thank them for everything and I hope to leave with the Ballon d’Or, and in one way or another, dedicate it to them.”

Welcome to the Ballon d’Or 2026, a world of allegiance and betrayal, of politics and legacy, like Succession meets Real Housewives. The award has become more tribal than ever, contested by such fragile egos that nobody can say what they really think. Players now launch full-blown PR campaigns, and at this point we are really only one step away from direct canvassing, from Khvicha Kvaratskhelia knocking on Henry Winter’s door with a pamphlet titled “A Vote For Kvara Is A Vote For Change”.

If Mbappe’s approach has been to openly court bloc voting, Yamal’s has been more divisive, attempting to hit Kane’s campaign with some long-distance aura bankruptcy. “The Ballon d’Or is for the best player of the year, someone different, someone we have enjoyed watching, who has that magic,” Yamal said. “It’s not to do with the sheer number of goals. When I think of the Ballon d’Or I think of Messi, Ronaldinho, players that make you dream.”

Yamal, it seems, does not dream of Harry Kane and his incredible 73-goal season. Beyond the flagrant disrespect, it’s also pretty flawed logic. Kane is enormously popular to watch. He’s also the only candidate who makes slide tackles in his own box, hits 50-yard switches and scores outrageous goals from everywhere. Whereas Yamal was anonymous in the worst World Cup final in living memory.

The 19-year-old’s goal here, of course, is to reframe the conversation as a battle between himself and Mbappe, which is clever, given one of them won the World Cup and La Liga last season and the other won no trophies at all. “I think I deserve it this year because of what I’ve won,” Yamal added, in case we were in any doubt. “For me, Mbappe and I are the best in the world. Everyone who watches the matches knows it.”

There is a hint of desperation running through much of the discourse. Even Kane, who has taken a more stoic approach, has been on a PR drive this month, sitting down for a raft of interviews to discuss his goalscoring exploits while acknowledging the Ballon d’Or hype.

And really, who can blame them? The Ballon d’Or has become a high-stakes game beyond the game, a vessel for our obsession with individualism in a team sport. On some level this is just a reflection of the modern world, a world in which social media fetishises celebrities, where online communities are more important than physical ones, where bands no longer exist in the charts. There is an irony here, that Kane is the favourite principally because the best three teams – Arsenal, PSG and Spain – succeeded precisely because of their collective ethos.

Perhaps for Kane, it means even more than his rivals. Yamal and Mbappe were teenage World Cup winners. They have time to amass Champions Leagues, to collect multiple golden orbs while wearing sequin suits. For Kane, this might be it. “This was my greatest season,” he keeps stressing, and at the end his career it probably will be. That was peak Kane. He might not say it so explicitly, but Kane wants the Ballon d’Or and believes he’s earned it.

In recent years the Ballon d’Or has increasingly brought out the game’s base impulses, becoming a vessel for disdain between Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, a vehicle for social media bedroom-dwellers to argue the toss. Messi’s detractors like to think he personally stole awards from Virgil van Dijk, Robert Lewandowski and Erling Haaland. Then there was Real Madrid’s petty boycott because Vinicius Jr lost out to Rodri.

It doesn’t help that the entire premise is flawed, given no one has ever defined exactly how to weigh personal accomplishments against team achievements. Given its nebulous criteria, there is something skewed in the way players are made to feel their legacies are at stake here. Mbappe was a World Cup winner at 19, yet many will consider his destiny unfulfilled should he never win the Ballon d’Or.

It would have seemed inconceivable back when he conquered the world in 2018 that an 11-year-old in Barcelona’s academy might win it first. But it is Yamal, not Mbappe, who has positioned himself as Kane’s greatest threat in 2026. The campaigning is nearly over. The pair have one last chance to sway minds, one last stage to share: the ruthless goalscorer v the thrilling prodigy at Wembley. Otherwise known as England v Spain.