Lamine Yamal finished third at the 2026 Ballon d’Or on Monday night. On Daniel Garb’s ballot, he was sixth.
Garb, who has represented Australia on the France Football jury since 2018, published his full top 10 the day after the ceremony. He put Harry Kane first and Kylian Mbappé second, in line with the room, then broke sharply: Lionel Messi third, Rodri fourth, Michael Olise fifth, and Yamal only sixth, ahead of Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Erling Haaland, Pau Cubarsí and Jude Bellingham.
Olise above Yamal
The call that stood out was Olise over Yamal. Writing in Football360, Garb pointed to the Bayern Munich forward’s 29 assists across all competitions and 22 goals, together with his output for France at the World Cup.
“His creative output was ridiculous…He is so often the final contributor to a goal, and he plays the deadly ball as well as the easy one.”
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On Yamal, who ended the summer on the winning side of Spain’s 1-0 extra-time victory over Argentina in the World Cup final, Garb was almost apologetic.
“Yamal didn’t do anything wrong. I just felt the players above him had either greater output or greater World Cups.”
Messi above the Golden Ball winner
Rodri was named Golden Ball winner at the 2026 World Cup after anchoring Spain’s midfield to the title, with Spain conceding just one goal across eight matches. Messi took the Silver Ball with Argentina. Garb still placed the Argentine above the Spain midfielder on his Ballon d’Or card.
In his column, Garb singled out Messi’s eight goals in the tournament, which left him second in the Golden Boot race behind Mbappé, as decisive weight on what he called an “abnormal” individual run.
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Kane first on goals alone
For the top spot, Garb treated the Mbappé-Kane debate as a straight goals contest. He cited 73 goals for Kane across Bayern Munich and England during the assessment period against Mbappé’s 58 for Real Madrid and France, and concluded that a 15-goal gap was simply too large to look past. Mbappé’s World Cup, he conceded, would have taken him higher if the margin had been five to ten goals narrower.
Garb’s full ballot
- Harry Kane
- Kylian Mbappé
- Lionel Messi
- Rodri
- Michael Olise
- Lamine Yamal
- Khvicha Kvaratskhelia
- Erling Haaland
- Pau Cubarsí
- Jude Bellingham
How the jury actually voted
The final 2026 standings matched Garb only on Kane and Mbappé at the top. From third place down the panel diverged sharply from the Australian: Yamal took bronze, Rodri came fourth, Messi fifth, and Olise ended up ninth, with Ousmane Dembélé and Fabián Ruiz slotting into a top 10 that Garb’s ballot did not include. His picks at ninth and tenth, Cubarsí and Bellingham, missed the top ten entirely.
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