Two races are running in parallel. In the analytical lists compiled by football media across Europe, the teenager from Barcelona is the clear leader. In the odds markets, the England captain is wearing the favourite’s tag.
GiveMeSport’s refreshed ranking, published on 20 October, puts Yamal first on the strength of winning the World Cup with Spain and a La Liga title with Barcelona. Rodri is second and Ousmane Dembélé third.
Mohamed Salah is fifth after a 34-goal, 12-assist season for Liverpool, with Kane sixth and Vinícius Júnior eighth, held back, in the compilers’ reading, by a trophy-less club season at Real Madrid.
Kane’s season leads on sheer volume
The betting market reads the same season differently. Kane scored 61 goals in 51 games for Bayern Munich in 2025-26, a club record, and added the Bundesliga, the DFB-Pokal and the European Golden Shoe. He then struck six more times at the World Cup, where England finished third.
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That has been enough for every major bookmaker to price him odds-on since the middle of October. Sports Illustrated’s rolling tracker had him clear of the field through the autumn, with Yamal the one serious challenger and Kylian Mbappé a distant third.
The trophy cost at Real Madrid
Not every nominee can lean on silverware. Real Madrid finished the season without a major trophy, and the three names it carried into the shortlist, Mbappé, Jude Bellingham and Vinícius, all face the same complaint from voters.
Vinícius turned in 28 goals and 16 assists in 66 matches, the official nomination data shows, and still only reached eighth on the GiveMeSport list.
Voting closed on 28 September
The result was effectively locked in almost a month ago. Each of the 100 voters, one specialist journalist per country drawn from the top 100 of the FIFA ranking, ranked ten players from a 30-man shortlist, with 15 points awarded for a first-place vote and descending through 12, 10, 8, 7, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 for tenth.
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The published criteria still list individual performance ahead of trophies, which is why Mbappé and Vinícius are in the race at all. The envelopes are opened on Monday evening at the London Palladium, which is hosting the men’s ceremony for the first time. The ceremony starts at 8pm local time.
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