Five Ballon d’Or transfers contradict Alexander-Arnold claim and could influence Sancho ‘dream’

The Ballon d’Or has become A Thing for players in the modern era but this summer has been marked by transfer decisions being made based on winning it, with Liverpool heavily impacted.

Trent Alexander-Arnold leaving Liverpool for Real Madrid
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”.

Jan Kromkamp has a lot to answer for.

With Michael Owen in 2001 still the only winner of the award as a Liverpool player, and Real Madrid offering a platform to more individual champions than any other club in history, it was not difficult to see where Alexander-Arnold was signalling and manoeuvring with his career crossroads on the horizon.

Conducted in October 2024 at a time Alexander-Arnold was supposedly locked in negotiations with Liverpool over extending a contract due to expire in the summer, it might as well have been an exit interview.

Alexander-Arnold did downplay the Ballon d’Or lure at his Real unveiling, saying he was not sure it “influenced my decision to come here at all” as “it is going to be quite hard to win the Ballon d’Or with the amount of superstars in this team”.

But he also claimed to have been learning Spanish for “a few months”, and said he “grew up watching Real Madrid win three Champions League titles in a row” despite literally appearing in the last of those finals, so his status as a reliable narrator is uncertain.

Rayan Cherki joining Manchester City
“I want to win the Ballon d’Or and win the Champions League,” reads and sounds like a bold but feasible set of objectives laid out by Cherki as a new Manchester City signing.

Yet that was 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 do only have as many Ballon d’Or wins as Blackpool, Dukla Prague and Ferencvaros, but you see his point.

Mohamed Salah staying at Liverpool
Many seemed to consider it an inevitability but the 2025 award was beyond Salah once his no-show across two legs of a Champions League last-16 exit to Paris Saint-Germain was completed.

The Egyptian was at one stage most certainly among the favourites, but record-breaking excellence in a Premier League title win was never likely to be enough by itself.

But it remains a holy grail of sorts – and a key motivation behind his decision to resist Saudi Arabia overtures and continue at Liverpool with a new contract.

“It’s not in my hands, but obviously, one day I would like to win the Ballon d’Or for my people,” he said in May. “When you come from a village in Egypt, as a child, it’s difficult to dream of the Ballon d’Or. It was when I came to Liverpool that I started to think that, maybe, one day…”

Salah went on to point out that “several winners in recent years have been in their 30s” so his candidacy remains strong, as “next season promises to be exciting with the defence of our title with Liverpool and the Champions League, the Africa Cup of Nations with Egypt and the World Cup.”

Jamie Carragher will be wondering why the little dancer listed three major tournaments there alongside a jolly continent-wide gathering, but 2026 does feel like Salah’s best opportunity to round off his long catalogue of achievements.

Jadon Sancho deciding his next steps
Vinicius Junior came second. Callum Hudson-Odoi was third. Phil Foden and Rodrygo rounded out the top five. But they all lagged behind Sancho in the running for Goal’s NXGN award, handed to the season’s best player under the age of 19.

It can be an indicator of success for the transition from prodigious excellence to brilliance at a more senior level; the last two winners were Lamine Yamal and Jude Bellingham.

But it can go the way of the 2021 winner, with the pressure translating to unfulfilled potential.

Sancho never envisaged taking that path when he was crowned in 2019, saying: “This is not the end of it. I dream of winning the Ballon d’Or, given the likes of those who have won it previously, like Leo Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Modric and Ronaldinho.”

Six years later, compulsive buyers Chelsea have paid £5m to specifically not sign him and the 25-year-old has no part to play in the Manchester United revolution.

If he wants to revive those long-faded Ballon d’Or dreams, it might be a start for Sancho to drop his wage demands and secure a more permanent “freedom” arrangement.

Pedri considering Manchester City
That Rodri win in 2024 was a watershed moment for many a player as the first Manchester City coronation, and only the second defensive-minded victor in almost three decades.

“Since Rodri won it, it’s shown that a player who runs the midfield and dictates the tempo and the rhythm of the game can win a Ballon d’Or,” said compatriot Pedri, one of the standard-bearers of the next generation of midfield metronomes.

“It’s always been a dream of mine to lift the Ballon d’Or,” he added in May. “But right now, there’s a month to go, and the focus is on the team – on completing the Treble, which is what really matters and once that month’s over, we’ll see if we can start talking about things like that.”

The conversation sadly ended there, with Pedri powerless to stop Inter in the Champions League semi-finals before defeat to Portugal in the Nations League final. The sight of Vitinha and Joao Neves controlling the games on each of those occasions cannot have helped.

But perhaps the answer is staring Pedri in the face: a British transfer record move to Manchester City to truly emulate Rodri.