5 great players who never won the Ballon d'Or

Ballon d'Or is an award to validate the achievements of an individual over the calendar year. The Ballon d'Or is handed over by France Football (a French weekly magazine containing football news from all over the world). It is the most reputed football related magazine across Europe.

The first Ballon d'Or was presented in 1956 and has been an annual affair since then. However, between 2010 and 2015, France Football and FIFA collaborated and it was collectively called FIFA Ballon d'Or. But the association broke down and the name was reverted back to Ballon d'Or.

The first Ballon d'Or was won by Stanley Matthews of Blackpool, who beat a certain someone named Alfredo Di Stefano. Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have won the prestigious award the most number of times, 5 each and are yet again competing for this year's award.

With the competition for the pole position being absolutely rigorous, there are always a few great personalities who miss out on the award.

So let's take a look at 5 great footballers of the recent era who never won the Ballon d'Or. We are excluding greats such as Ferenc Puskas, Bobby Moore, Bernd Schuster, Kenny Dalglish and many others who didn't play in the recent past.

Before we start, I need to put out a few Honourable mentions, Oliver Kahn, Jurgen Klinsmann, Dennis Bergkamp, Paolo Maldini and Xavi.

#5 Gianluigi Buffon

Ballon d'Or has been an award that has shown its lack of respect for shot-stoppers. The only goalkeeper to win the coveted award was Lev Yashin a.k.a The Black Spider, who was honoured for his goalkeeping prowess way back in 1963.

Buffon won the World Cup with Italy in 2006 and kept 5 clean sheets and only conceded twice throughout the entire tournament. Buffon has 9 Serie A title successes to his name apart from being the most capped player for Italy.

How this absolute Behemoth of the game never won a Ballon d'Or is beyond everyone's belief.

#4 Claude Makélélé

Imagine a player so good at his duties that a position was named after him, that's Claude Makelele for you. The Frenchman was so adept at his position that the defensive midfield role came to be known as the Makelele role.

When Real Madrid sold Makelele, Zidane said-

"Why put another layer of gold paint on the Bentley when you are losing the entire engine?"

For years he used his engines to break up attacks from excellent defensive positions and fed the ball to the creative players to build up counter attacks. Win the ball, play it simple, that's the Makelele role.

#3 Andrés Iniesta

Andres Iniesta came close to winning the Ballon d'Or on two occasions, in 2010 when he came 2nd and in 2012 when he came 3rd. He lost to his former Catalan teammate Lionel Messi on both the occasions.

The Spanish maestro pushed his team to European glory in the Euro 2012 when he was named the man of the match in half of the games and was named the player of the tournament. All of this after he brought the World Cup to Spain in 2010 by scoring in the finals.

You can argue that somewhere in the supremacy of Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, Iniesta went a little bit underappreciated.

#2 Thierry Henry

While being one of the finest footballers to have ever graced the Premier League is a good enough reason to be on this list, the prime reason why he is on the list is due to the controversial circumstances in which he missed out on the Ballon d'Or.

He came 2nd to Pavel Nedved in 2003 and 3rd to Fabio Cannavaro in 2006. With many believing that the Frenchman was robbed of his award in 2003 as Nedved's achievement came nowhere to close to Henry's that year.

It'll make you scratch your head when you'll come to know that despite scoring a career high of 39 goals, winning the player of the season, winning the golden boot and pushing Arsenal to an unbeaten Premier League success that season, the Frenchman still didn't win the Ballon d'Or.

#1 Raúl González

The former Real Madrid captain is the third highest goal scorer in the Champions League history and has banged in a total of 275 league goals across various domestic disciplines.

Acclaimed as a legend for his service to Los Blancos, he won 10 domestic titles and 3 Champions league titles with Real Madrid while scoring in two of the finals. During his 17 year long career with the Los Blancos and making over 550 appearances he never received a red card.

In 2001 he came second to Michael Owen in the race to the prestigious award. In all honesty, Owen had an exceptional season that year. But seriously how Raul never won the Ballon d'Or is a great enigma.

Edited by Emeka Monyei