The 2025 Ballon d’Or ceremony produced notable upheaval across the men’s rankings, with Ousmane Demb\u00e9l\u00e9 claiming the main prize for the first time and becoming just the sixth French player to win. The winner had never been shortlisted for the award until 2025. On the women’s side Aitana Bonmat\u00ed secured a third-straight Ballon d’Or F\u00e9minin, matching Lionel Messi as the only other player to win the Ballon d’Or three times in a row. First-time winners in the women’s game for the Kopa, Yashin and Gerd M\u00fcller awards were Vicky L\u00f3pez, Hannah Hampton and Ewa Pajor.<\/p>\n
Comparing the 2024 and 2025 shortlists highlights large movements. Cole Palmer rose from 25th to 8th for Chelsea, an increase of 17 places. Vitinha moved from 27th to 3rd for PSG, a jump of 24 spots. Several players who were unranked in 2024 entered high positions in 2025: Ousmane Demb\u00e9l\u00e9 (PSG) to 1st, Mohamed Salah (Liverpool) to 4th, Raphinha (Barcelona) to 5th, Achraf Hakimi (PSG) to 6th, Pedri (Barcelona) to 11th, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia (PSG) to 12th and Scott McTominay (Napoli) to 18th.<\/p>\n
There were sizeable declines as well. Rodri (Man City) and Dani Carvajal (Real Madrid) fell off the 2025 shortlist entirely after seasons disrupted by injury. Rodri, notably, was on crutches when he accepted his 2024 award. Vin\u00edcius J\u00fanior (Real Madrid) dropped from 2nd to 16th, Jude Bellingham (Real Madrid) from 3rd to 23rd and Erling Haaland (Man City) from 5th to 26th. Lautaro Mart\u00ednez (Inter Milan) moved from 7th to 20th, Florian Wirtz (in his final season at Leverkusen) fell from 12th to 29th and Phil Foden dropped off the shortlist.<\/p>\n
Other active players who did not return to the 2025 list include Dani Olmo, Ademola Lookman, Martin \u00d8degaard, Federico Valverde, William Saliba, Antonio R\u00fcdiger and Nico Williams. The reshuffle underlined how form, fitness and club trajectories altered perceptions between the 2024 and 2025 shortlists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Demb\u00e9l\u00e9 wins 2025 Ballon d’Or; major ranking shifts include Vitinha, Cole Palmer and several fallers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3021,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1017,1031,646],"tags":[593,319,1065],"class_list":["post-3022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-barcelona","category-paris-saint-germain","category-trophy","tag-ballon-dor","tag-cole-palmer","tag-ousmane-dembele-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}