‘Messi, Ronaldo lead the way’ – Top 10 players with most numbers of Ballon d’Or awards

Ballon d’Or is an annual award presented by a French weekly magazine named France Football to the best men’s footballer of the year.

Started in 1956, the Ballon d’Or is the oldest individual award in football and is also one of the most prestigious awards in the world along with The Best FIFA Men’s Player award.

England’s Stanley Mathews was the first recipient of this award in 1956. The award has been held every single year since 1956 barring last year when the organisers had decided to cancel the award to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic which had cut short the domestic seasons of several nations.

From 2010 to 2015, France Football had entered into an agreement with FIFA to merge the Ballon D’or temporarily with the FIFA World Player of the Year award which was started in 1991. In these six years, the new award was called FIFA Ballon D’or. 

Argentine star Lionel Messi is the current holder of the award and has won it the most number of times (6) followed by Portuguese superstar Cristiano Ronaldo who has one less than Messi. 

In terms of podium finishes, both Ronaldo and Messi are tied (12). Since 2007, there have been only two occasions when either of the players did not finish among the top three players. While Ronaldo finished outside the podium in 2010, Messi did the same in 2018.

Michel Platini, Johan Cruyff and Marco van Basten have won the award thrice in history.

Who are the top 10 players with the most Ballon d’Or wins?