Artificial Intelligence has been used to predict the next 15 winners of the Ballon d’Or – and some surprising names have made the list.
The French football award has significantly evolved since its start in 1956, with Lionel Messi, the current holder, earning a record eight gongs and Cristiano Ronaldo holding the most nominations for the top prize (18).
However, fans eager to get a glimpse into the future of the France Football prize to honour the best player have been given surprising answers by AI.
X (formerly Twitter) account Football Archive asked AI to name the winners of the top prize until 2038 – and there are plenty of talking points.
Real Madrid star Jude Bellingham has been tipped for the top prize in 2024 – and would be the first English winner of the main award since Michael Owen in 2001 if that happened. He won the Kopa Trophy, for players under 21 years old, last year.
Kylian Mbappe, who was third on the 2023 list, is expected to take the top prize in 2025, before Messi claims a ninth award the following year, when he would be 39 years of age.
Victory for Messi would extend the Argentinian’s dominance in winning the award at the expense of his Portuguese foe Cristiano Ronaldo, who is not predicted to win the top prize again.
Moving forward, young talents Phil Foden, currently at Man City, and Gavi, now at Barcelona, are expected to top the poll in 2027 and 2028 respectively.
Foden’s club colleague Erling Haaland, who was second in 2023 while also scooping the Gerd Muller Trophy, is predicted to go one better in the main Ballon d’Or in 2029.
Real Madrid’s Vinicius Jnr is tipped to win the first award of the 2030s, having earned the Socrates Award for his humanitarian work last October.
Brighton and Ireland star Evan Ferguson is the surprise pick for the 2031 award, despite no player from the Irish Republic ever making the Ballon d’Or’s top three to date.
Bayer Leverkusen’s Florian Wirtz, currently 21, is expected to win the top prize in 2032, with Bayern Munich’s Jamal Musiala, who finished second behind Bellingham for the Kopa Trophy in 2023, claiming the big one in 2033.
The first name to appear twice on the list, Frenchman Mbappe, who has just left PSG, is expected to follow up his 2025 award with another nine years later, when he would be 35.
Ferguson will then win his second ever Ballon d’Or in 2035, to follow up his success four years earlier, according to the AI data.
Lamine Yamal, currently just 16 years of age, but plying his trade at Barcelona, is expected to be the Messi or Ronaldo of his era by earning back-to-back Ballon d’Or awards in 2036 and 2037.
And Turkey’s Arda Guler, who is now playing for Real Madrid at the age of 19, is the projected winner of the 2038 prize.
With the 2023 ceremony taking place in October last year, it is expected that the next award ceremony will be held at some point this autumn.
Beyond that, football fans have a decade and a half to see how many of these predictions are accurate, and which are wide of the goalposts.
