France's forward Kylian Mbappe controls the ball during a training session ahead of the UEFA Euro 2024 football Championship at the Home Deluxe Arena Stadium in Paderborn, Germany, on June 12.FRANCK FIFE/Getty Images
While doing commentary for TNT Sports on the Champions League final earlier this month, former England centre back Rio Ferdinand had the perfect vantage point to see one of the greatest teams in soccer history continue to separate itself from the chasing pack.
Real Madrid, which entered the game with twice the number of Champions League trophies as the next best team, beat Borussia Dortmund 2-0 to clinch a 15th European crown. Vinicius Junior salted the game away with Real Madrid’s second goal and seven minutes remaining.
However, rather than acclaim the Brazilian’s strike, and the seeming inevitability of another famous Madrid victory, Ferdinand chose instead to utter the words “Ballon d’Or” nine times in a 30-second span, putting far greater emphasis on the sport’s greatest individual award than the most coveted prize in European club soccer.
But then viewing team sports as a series of A-listers with a cluster of key grips for emotional support is hardly new. Ever since the NBA’s Lakers versus Celtics rivalry morphed into Magic versus Larry in the eighties, team sports have been increasingly viewed almost exclusively through the prism of the principal protagonists, and the coming European Championship is no different.
While Vinicius Jr. will be looking to further press his Ballon d’Or case in the United States as Brazil attempts to dethrone Lionel Messi’s Argentina at the Copa America, a trio of his Real Madrid teammates will each be pushing their own candidacies in Germany at the Euros.
England’s Jude Bellingham, Germany’s Toni Kroos and France’s Kylian Mbappé – who joined the Spanish champions just two days after their Champions League victory – will all be feeling confident that national team success should be enough to push their individual claims over the top.
That all four Real Madrid teammates are the bookmakers’ favourites to lift the award on Oct. 28 is a nice bit of PR for the Spanish club. For the players involved, though, it’s a chance to step into the void that was created when Messi left Paris St-Germain to join Inter Miami in Major League Soccer last year. Messi, the reigning Ballon d’Or winner, has won a record eight of them, and between him and the other so-called GOAT (greatest of all time) of soccer, Cristiano Ronaldo, the pair have captured all but two since Ronaldo won his first in 2008. Luka Modric and Karim Benzema – both Real Madrid players at the time – were the two outliers.
While Ronaldo will be at these Euros as the captain of Portugal – set to take part in his record sixth Euros – the 39-year-old hasn’t factored in the top-three of the Ballon d’Or voting since 2019 and has since left Europe to try his hand with Saudi Arabia’s Al-Nassr. Though he enters the Euros as the competition’s career scoring leader, with 14 goals in 25 appearances, he has a more-than-capable supporting cast this time around. The 2016 European champion was the only team to post a perfect record in qualifying, winning all 10 games, scoring 36 and conceding just two.
Like Ronaldo, the 20-year-old Bellingham knows what it’s like to be part of a European Championship final, as his England team was a couple of penalty kicks away from winning Euro 2020 – held in 2021 because of the pandemic. However, the former Birmingham City prodigy – who had his number retired long before Blues part-owner Tom Brady had his own jersey hung from the rafters – played no part in that final loss as a 17-year-old.
Since then, though, Bellingham has barely looked back, playing in all five games for England at the Qatar World Cup, earning Bundesliga player of the season for Borussia Dortmund, before securing his dream move to Real Madrid last summer. In the Spanish capital he has belied his youth, taking the No. 5 jersey once worn by Zinédine Zidane, and leading the club to a Spanish league title and the European Cup, adding the Kopa Trophy, as the world’s best younger player, for good measure.
The weight of history may be against Bellingham, however. Only five men have added a European Championship victory to a domestic league and Champions League double in the same season, and they all played for PSV Eindhoven and the victorious 1988 Dutch squad.
Kroos, Germany’s midfield talisman, will be facing the same hoodoo, although unlike Bellingham, as a member of Die Mannschaft, Kroos is no stranger to championship success on the international stage. The 34-year-old played every minute as Germany won the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, besting Messi’s Argentina in the final.
But that was 10 years ago, and Kroos has already retired from the national team since then, with the six-time Champions League winner walking away after Germany’s exit at the hands of England at Euro 2021. But he unretired earlier this year after being coaxed to do so by current head coach Julian Nagelsmann, although Kroos has since said he will hang up his boots for good at the conclusion of the tournament.
Like Kroos, Mbappé is well acquainted with the pinnacle of international soccer, winning the 2018 World Cup and then scoring a hat trick in a losing effort in 2022 as France came up just short of a repeat.
His history at the European Championship is less sublime, with Mbappé missing the crucial fifth penalty in a shootout loss to Switzerland three years ago at the last-16 stage.
The 25-year-old enters the European Championship in a rich vein of form, however. He just led France’s Ligue 1 in scoring for the sixth successive season, beating Canada’s Jonathan David by eight goals for the honour this time around, as well as tying with England’s Harry Kane as the leading scorer in the Champions League.
And though he joined Real Madrid too late to win a coveted Champions League title – for this season at least – his role as captain of one of the Euro 2024 favourites could yet see him lifting a trophy representing continental supremacy, as well as get him one step closer to the trophy he really wants.
As he told German newspaper Bild earlier this week: “The Ballon d’Or remains my goal.”