5 superb players who were robbed of a World Cup Golden Ball: Messi 2nd…

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20 July 2026

Lionel Messi

looked set to make history with a third

World Cup

Golden Ball, only for

Rodri

to snatch the award after

Spain

beat

Argentina

in the final.

If you think Messi was unlucky, he’s far from the first great player to be denied the

Golden Ball. And if history tells us anything, this won’t be the last to divide opinion.

We’ve ranked the five biggest robberies in the history of the

Golden Ball.

Germany’s 2014

winners had the same issue as

many of the great teams in football history

in that they didn’t have any one standout individual.

Manuel Neuer was the highest-ranking German on that year’s Ballon d’Or shortlist, making the podium behind Messi and Ronaldo. But we weren’t having a repeat of the Oliver Kahn debacle (more on that later).

Luka Modric won the award in 2018; we’d argue that by the same token, Kroos deserved it four years earlier. The midfielder was outstanding, particularly with his starring role – one assist and two goals – in their historic 7-1 shellacking of hosts Brazil in the semis.

2014 Golden Ball winner

was superb in the group stages, but he looked knackered and increasingly ineffective as the tournament wore on. It felt more like a

FIFA

sympathy vote after

lost the final than recognition of his overall tournament.

Special mention to James Rodriguez,

the

face of the 2014

. You can’t be giving the Golden Ball to a player knocked out in the quarters, although it would’ve been fun if they did.

Diego Forlan is the only Golden Ball winner since Salvatore Schillaci at Italia 90 to win it without making it to the final.

We’re not principally against that, and watching Forlan master the Jabulani was a thing of beauty. It was nice to see the so-often-underrated Uruguayan striker get his flowers.

Call us hypocrites, because we argue against

on these same grounds later, and Spain’s 2010 team were even more of a well-oiled machine than this one. This was a team all about the collective, with no one standout individual.

The difference is that, good as Forlan was in 2010, he was no towering talisman like Messi in 2026. There was no such individual in South Africa. And so it should’ve gone to Xavi, the embodiment of Spain’s tiki-taka style. His passing stats at that tournament were

off the charts

Hot take alert, but bear with us. We feel like killjoys for saying that Luka Modric shouldn’t have won the award in 2018.

His role in Croatia’s unforgettable run to the

final in Russia also resulted in him breaking up the Messi-Ronaldo duopoly and claiming that year’s Ballon d’Or.

We don’t want to do that annoying thing where we denigrate one great player’s achievements in order to talk up another. But let’s take an objective, dispassionate view.

Croatia benefited from a ludicrously lopsided knockout bracket. They needed penalties to make it past Denmark and Russia. Looking back, we can probably concede that England team in the semi-finals weren’t exactly a heavyweight. And Barcelona’s Ivan Rakitic was similarly influential in that midfield engine room.

When Croatia finally came up against top-quality opposition in the final, they were dismantled by France. Modric and Rakitic found themselves outclassed by Les Bleus’ midfield.

Griezmann was the man of the match in France’s almost anticlimactically straightforward 4-2 victory, and he was invariably their best player throughout the knockout stages – which included a hard-fought victory over Belgium’s Golden Generation, briefly living up to the hype, in the semis, as well as earlier wins over

and Uruguay.

There can be no arguments about Messi winning it in 2022.

Perhaps the scales have been evened out. As above, Messi was arguably a bit lucky to win his first Golden Ball award in 2014 – but he’s been robbed of a third award in 2026.

This is no slight on

. The best, most influential player in Spain’s World Cup-winning team. We can understand why he won it.

But while he is back to his Ballon d’Or-winning best, a key cog in La Roja’s comprehensive and deserved triumph, he was still ultimately just a cog.

#Unai Simon, Pau Cubarsi, Aymeric Laporte, Marc Cucurella, Pedro Porro, Fabian Ruiz and Pedri… All similarly faultless in Luis de la Fuente’s grand plan, controlling every game and limiting the opposition to next to nothing, time and again.

Contrast that to

. You look at the rabble that played out extra time in the final and ask yourself how such a team came within one overhit Giuliano Simeone strike of taking it to penalties. Messi is the answer.

Spain expertly shut him out in the final, but no other team could do so. A 39-year-old MLS player carried out the carry job of all carry jobs,

bettering his output from Qatar

and producing a

genuinely Maradona-esque impact

to put on a show in the group stages and inspire

through the knockouts.

Individual awards in a team sport are inherently a bit silly. But if we’re recognising a great individual, it’s hard to look past Messi’s last dance.

Germany in 2002 might be the most ordinary team to have ever made it to a

final.

They have their goalkeeper’s heroics to thank for making it all the way to the showpiece occasion in Yokohama, so there was logic in Oliver Kahn claiming the award. But c’mon now, let’s be serious.

You felt like the voting committee decided this one before a ball was kicked in the final, when the imposing German didn’t cover himself in glory for either of Ronaldo’s goals.

We’re still asking ourselves how Il Fenomeno didn’t claim the award in 2002, if only for narrative purposes alone.

There’s a

superb documentary

about the Brazil icon’s road to redemption. His comeback was the story of that

. No one’s sitting down for a documentary about Kahn’s saves, are they?

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