The admission came from the top of the ceremony itself. Garcia, editor-in-chief of France Football and the man in charge of the Ballon d’Or committee, said jurors could not agree on which Spain player to reward from the summer’s World Cup triumph, and that Rodri picked up ballots that might otherwise have gone to Yamal.
Yamal finished third at the ceremony on Monday, with Mbappé second and Rodri fourth. Lionel Messi came fifth, in a top five confirmed by OneFootball that also had Khvicha Kvaratskhelia sixth and Ousmane Dembélé seventh.
“Rodri took votes from Lamine”
Speaking to L’Équipe, Garcia was blunt about what the ballot papers showed.
“If you analyse the votes, you see there was a split of ballots among the Spanish world champions between Rodri and Lamine Yamal. Rodri took votes from Lamine in this vote,” Garcia told the French outlet.
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Garcia pointed to the Spain winger’s start to the World Cup, which he began carrying an injury, and to a tournament in which the 19-year-old found the net only once. That made it hard, Garcia argued to L’Équipe, for jurors to isolate his contribution from the collective Spanish effort.
Kane’s margin over Mbappé was tighter than Rodri’s over Vinícius
Kane, Bayern Munich’s striker, became the first English player to win the Ballon d’Or since Michael Owen in 2001, a 25-year gap set out by The National. He finished the season with 73 goals for club and country, drove Bayern to a domestic double and reached a Champions League semi-final with his club and a World Cup semi-final with England.
Garcia said the race for first place was tighter than the margin suggested.
“The points gap is smaller than the one between Rodri and Vinícius in 2024. Back then, it was 41 points,” he told L’Équipe, meaning Kane’s winning margin over Mbappé fell inside that 41-point line.
Garcia himself did not vote for Kane
The France Football boss acknowledged in the same interview that his own ballot had not gone the way of the eventual winner. Garcia said he had cast his vote for a player who did not take the trophy and whom he believed had a strong case to win, without naming the candidate he had backed.
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