Harry Kane’s Ballon d’Or win is anything but good for the Premier League

Harry Kane’s Ballon d’Or win spells anything but positive omens for the Premier League product, and has cemented the English top-flight as the worst place to be in Europe if you’re gunning for the France Football award.

Harry Kane has just won the 2026 Ballon d’Or… for a season that could hardly shine the boots of his Premier League peak in the 2010s, and even early 2020s.

By running off to Germany to play second-rate football, the Englishman has proved what fans have always suspected: the Premier League is not made for Ballon d’Or winners, and it never will be.

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Harry Kane’s Ballon d’Or season was levels beneath his Premier League prime

The precedent this sets is disturbing. But let’s get the obvious out of the way first - what about Rodri? Well, if what it takes to win the Ballon d’Or as a Premier League footballer is by succeeding in a financially doped Manchester City outfit, that isn’t positive.

Before Rodri, it was Cristiano Ronaldo, before that, Michael Owen. The latter arrived in an era pre-Lionel Messi and Ronaldo; the former was, well, Ronaldo.

That’s it, the list of Ballon d’Or winners residing in the Premier League is done. So, let’s take a gander at the other stars that England has witnessed in those years.

Mohamed Salah and Kevin De Bruyne. Two players who, when they played in the Premier League at the same time as Kane, individually outperformed the former Spurs striker for years.

Erling Haaland, Luis Suarez, Sergio Aguero, Eden Hazard and Virgil van Dijk are just a few more, but let’s look back to the former pair.

The Belgian once achieved a podium finish, while Salah’s career-best ranking was fourth - for a season in which he broke the Premier League goal involvement record, dragged an Arne Slot-helmed Liverpool to their first title in front of fans in 35 years, beat Erling Haaland to the Golden Boot, almost broke the Premier League assist record, and won an unprecedented third PFA Players’ Player of the Year award.

All of that got the Egyptian fourth. Ahead of him were PSG’s Vitinha and Ballon d’Or winner Ousmane Dembele, and Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal in his breakout term.

Three players, all of whom are allowed for their entire domestic seasons to rest, recover and prepare for the Champions League - while winning their leagues with ease, mind you - while Salah started 38 consecutive Premier League matches, broke almost every record available to him, and won the title.

Mohamed Salah is the only player to win the PFA POTY award three times. (Image - Getty)

For De Bruyne, his strongest season was 2019/20, in which he recorded an unprecedented number of Opta-defined ‘Big Chances Created’ and tied Thierry Henry’s former Premier League assist record.

He scooped up the PFA Players’ Player of the Year award with ease, without winning the Premier League title, and recorded the most goal involvements in the competition as an attacking midfielder.

Naturally, that wasn’t the season in which the Belgian received a podium place, because the Ballon d’Or doesn’t work that way. That arrived in 2022/23, when he won the treble with Manchester City and, despite playing at an extraordinarily high level, was visibly past his all-time peak.

The same applies to Kane this year - his prime arrived in the Premier League, when he won both the Golden Boot and the Playmaker Award in the same season, at Spurs in 2020/21.

Or in 2022/23, when he somehow bagged 30 goals in the Premier League for a struggling Tottenham Hotspur outfit that would have battled relegation without him, and outperformed his xG by a staggering nine goals.

Naturally, the Ballon d’Or didn't care, which makes it all the stranger, or luckier for Kane, that they chose this year to finally reward the Englishman for what he has done his entire career: be the world’s greatest striker, only in the far easier Bundesliga.

Did the Englishman win anything he wasn’t expected to win? Of course Kane was expected to win the Bundesliga, when Bayern Munich have lifted the trophy 35 TIMES since its inception.

Did Kane lose out on anything that, historically, has been a non-negotiable for Ballon d’Or winners? Of course, he failed to lift both the World Cup and the Champions League - two trophies that are always valued absurdly highly when voting for the France Football award.

So, how did he win it, and why is it so bad for the Premier League, if the Ballon d’Or finally judged a player by the correct criteria - their individual performance - and not collective achievements?

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The Premier League will always be valued unfairly by the Ballon d’Or

Kane won this award by sheer luck. The competition around him lacked the claims that, traditionally, have been used to decide the Ballon d’Or winner and stamp out the cases of clearly superior players.

Make no mistake, the Englishman was supremely lucky. If Yamal had lifted the World Cup as the tournament’s best player, and not Rodri, it would have been the Spaniard’s award.

If Kylian Mbappe had made it past France and Argentina, it would have been his. If Ousmane Dembele hadn’t been upstaged last term by Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, it would have been his, back-to-back. Yet, even if they had, Kane was clearly better.

As Apollo Creed once said: “You're lucky, so lucky. What you did was a miracle. You're the luckiest man on the face of the Earth. I want you to know that.”

Harry Kane got lucky, but he was always the deserved winner. (Image - Getty)

This isn’t an attempt to downplay Kane’s win - the Englishman did peak higher in England, but he was the deserved Ballon d’Or winner in 2026 - it's only to show how brutally undervalued Premier League players are.

The France Football award will always make life impossible for English top-flight superstars by weighing its league up as equally valuable to La Liga, Ligue 1, the Bundesliga.

Kane could never have scored 73 goals as a Premier League player, and he knows that. Likewise, winning the required trophies to overcome that drop off in goals scored, both the Champions League and the Premier League, is also near impossible.

The burden on any Premier League star to win a title on its own is extraordinary, and there are no rest days to recover for a Champions League push.

Salah knew it, he experienced it, while De Bruyne got a little closer than he did by being lucky enough to play in a Manchester City side that was doped to the financial high heavens and could push for both Champions League and Premier League glory.

Make no mistake, Kane could never have won this award by, as he often was in the Premier League, being the best striker in the world. And that’s why Haaland couldn’t do it, or Salah as a winger, or De Bruyne as an attacking midfielder.

As long as players like Mbappe, Dembele, Yamal get to relax in their respective leagues, and benefit from the Ballon d’Or’s misguided belief that their domestic titles are equally valuable, then the Premier League will suffer.

And as it does, players will begin to follow the Kane path. Move to Germany, score goals for fun, get rest, push for the Champions League, and enjoy a far easier life than you will in England.

That’s why players like Trent Alexander-Arnold, once on track to become the greatest full-back England has ever seen, jumped ship and ruined his career… all in the pursuit of the Ballon d’Or.

Players who play in England will know, in every game that they appear in, that their paths are the hardest. But until the Ballon d’Or accepts that, how many superstars will the Premier League lose?

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