2019 Golden Ball: list of 30 candidates

Here is the first skimming, the narrowest list of names among which the winner of the will be elected Golden Ball 2019. There are now 30 final candidates, those that will be possible to vote by selected journalists. The names were chosen by the jury of France Football, which as always was based on three criteria: individual and collective performances (victories) during the year, the player's class (talent and fair play), the player's career.

Now that the list has been made official, it will be up to the international jury of specialized journalists (composed of one representative for each country), to vote for their personal ranking of the 5 strongest players in descending order.

Of the personal hierarchical scales that will allow to assign the various scores (6 for the 1st position, to follow 4, 3, 2 and 1) which will then be added together to determine the winner. The bookmakers' favorite par excellence is the Liverpool center Virgil van Dijk, which will try to confirm for the second consecutive year (after the undertaking of Modric, excluded from 30) the break of the duopoly between Cristiano Ronaldo is Leo Messi went on for a decade.

2019 Golden Ball: list of 30 candidates

The Dutch Reds defender is certainly among the main candidates for the final victory together with the two phenomena of modern football, CR7 and La Pulce, with Alisson and Mohamed Salah (others protagonist of the victory in the Champions League of Liverpool) potential outsiders to be considered anyway.

Below is the list of the 30 names that will compete for the most coveted prize at the individual level, the 2019 Golden Ball.

1. Sadio Mane (Liverpool / Senegal)
2. Sergio Aguero (Manchester City / Argentina)
3. Frenkie de Jong (Barcelona / Holland)
4. Hugo Lloris (Tottenham / France)
5. Dusan Tadic (Ajax / Serbia)
6. Kylian Mbappe (PSG / France)
7. Trent Alexander-Arnold (Liverpool / England)
8. Donny van de Beek (Ajax / Netherlands)
9. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (Arsenal / Gabon)
10. Marc-Andre ter Stegen (Barcelona / Germany)
11. Cristiano Ronaldo (Juventus / Portugal)
12. Alisson (Liverpool / Brazil)
13. Matthijs de Ligt (Juventus / Netherlands)
14. Karim Benzema (Real Madrid / France)
15. Georginio Wijnaldum (Liverpool / Holland)
16. Virgil van Dijk (Liverpool / Holland)
17. Bernardo Silva (Manchester City / Brazil)
18. Heung-min Son (Tottenham / South Korea)
19. Robert Lewandowski (Bayern Munich / Poland)
20. Roberto Firmino (Liverpool / Brazil)
21. Lionel Messi (Barcelona / Argentina)
22. Riyad Mahrez (Manchester City / Algeria)
23. Kevin De Bruyne (Manchester City / Belgium)
24. Kalidou Koulibaly (Naples / Senegal)
25. Antoine Griezmann (Barcelona / France)
26. Mohamed Salah (Liverpool / Egypt)
27. Eden Hazard (Real Madrid / Belgium)
28. Marquinhos (PSG / Brazil)
29. Raheem Sterling (Manchester City / England)
30. Joao Felix (Atletico Madrid / Portugal)

Curiosities about the 30 chosen

In the 30 candidates for the victory of the Ballon d'Or, neither Italian nor Spanish appear, always present from 1956 to today. There is not even the holder of the trophy, Luka Modric, which ends at zero points as it had not happened since 1993 with the injured Marco Van Basten. And finally, the most represented nation – with five players – is the Netherlands which did not participate in either Euro 2016 or the 2018 World Cup.

The list of the 20 names for the 2019 women's Golden Ball

1. Sarah Bouhaddi (Lyon)
2. Lucy Bronze (Lyon)
3. Nilla Fischer (FC LinkOping City)
4. Pernille Harder (Wolfsburg)
5. Amandine Henry (Lyon)
6. Sam Kerr (Chicago Red Stars)
7. Dzsenifer Marozsan (Lyon)
8. Viviane Miedema (Arsenal)
9. Alex Morgan (Orlando Pride)
10. Ellen White (Manchester City)
11. Megan Rapinoe (Reign)
12. Lieke Martens (Barcelona)
13. Sari van Veenendaal (Atletico Madrid)
14. Wendie Renard (Lyon)
15. Rose Lavelle (Washington Spirit)
16. Marta (Orlando Pride)
17. Ada Hegerberg (Lyon)
18. Kosovar Asllani (Tacon)
19. Sofia Jakobsson (Tacon)
20. Tobin Heath (Portland Thorns)

Kopa Trophy, the list of 10 candidates

This is the list of candidates for the Kopa Trophy, an award dedicated to Raymond Kopa (the first French player to win the Golden Ball) and set up by France Football in 2018 to crown the best U-21 player in the world. Triumphing in the first edition was Kylian Mbappe in front of Pulisic and Kluivert.

• Joao Felix (Atletico Madrid)
• Jadon Sancho (Borussia Dortmund)
• Moise Kean (Everton)
• Samuel Chukwueze (Villarreal)
• Kang-in Lee (Valencia)
• Matthijs de Ligt (Juventus)
• Vinicius Jr (Real Madrid)
• Kai Havertz (Bayer Leverkusen)
• Matteo Guendouzi (Arsenal)
• Andriy Lunin (Valladolid)

Yashin Trophy, the list of 10 candidates

Following are the candidates for the trophy dedicated to Lev Yashin, established in 2019 and assigned to the best goalkeeper of the current calendar year.

• Alisson Becker (Liverpool)
• Manuel Neuer (Bayern Munich)
• Ederson (Manchester City)
• Andre Onana (Ajax)
• Wojciech Szczesny (Juventus)
• Jan Oblak (Atletico Madrid)
• Kepa Arrizabalaga (Chelsea)
• Samir Handanovic (Inter)
• Hugo Lloris (Tottenham)
• Marc-Andre ter Stegen (Barcelona)