There’s no perfect model for Ballon d’Or Feminin voting. Former voters describe what they look for

The Ballon d’Or Feminin voting process is relatively straightforward, and, on the surface, no different from the men’s honour given out on the same night.An international jury of specialized journalists from each of the top 50 countries (100 for the men’s award) in the FIFA rankings as of Sept. 8, 2026, determine the best women’s player based on criteria comprised of three principles, in descending order of importance: individual performances, decisive and impressive character; team performances and trophies; and class and fair play.However, the challenge of determining the single player who rose above the rest is not so simple when considering the obstacles in the women’s game, namely a landscape where women’s matches are not equally available for viewing or where outlets spread coverage equally.The Ballon d’Or Feminin has also only been awarded since 2018, and similar to women’s football in general, has a relatively shorter history than the men’s. The fact that two Spanish players (Aitana Bonmatí and Alexia Putellas) have split the last five awards is somewhat of a telling sign.The Athletic spoke to three former Ballon d’Or Feminin voters, on condition of anonymity to protect relationships, to understand the intricacies of voting in an award still finding its place among the women’s game’s biggest honours.What do jury members look for?Beyond the basic rules, jury members explained to The Athletic that they receive no specific guidance on which qualities, tournaments or statistics carry the most weight.“People think there’s going to be a perfect model, but we all have our own biases anyway about what we think is a good footballer,” said one previous Ballon d’Or voter. “It’s just the nature of the game. It’s trying to understand your own biases while trying to level them out.”One voter added that stats can muddy the picture, favouring forwards over other positions. “I think that attacking players maybe get valued a bit too high because it’s easy to vote for them when you see stats like goals and assists,” they said. “I try to look at the overall importance of a player for its team. “Take a defensive midfielder like Patri Guijarro. Her stats are not impressive if you look just at the numbers, but for that Barcelona team — for them to keep possession and complete dominance of a game — she is really, really important. They would not have been able to win all of those trophies without her, even though she’s not the one who scores the goals or delivers the assists.”It is, then, a balancing act. Some insist that one cannot win the Ballon d’Or in a major tournament year without dazzling on that major stage; others feel that World Cups or European Championships, and the global coverage they engender, can skew perceptions of players and unjustifiably overshadow club form.Past voting has painted a similarly mixed picture. When Megan Rapinoe won in 2019, following her Golden Boot and Golden Ball wins at the World Cup that summer, she had played just six matches for Reign FC in the National Women’s Soccer League during the period covered by the voting. England defender Lucy Bronze, who finished behind her, had won the Champions League and three other trophies with European giants Lyon.Manchester City manager Andrée Jeglertz, who is also nominated for Women’s Coach of the Year this year, mused over all this in his Friday press conference ahead of the latest Manchester derby. “It’s very difficult with individual prizes in the team sport,” he said. How do we measure the qualities in each player? Is it how many goals she is scoring? Assists? Are they playing in the winning team in the Champions League? Are they winning the best league in the world and winning the World Cup?“I think it’s important that people that are winning these titles are not just affecting themselves, they are affecting a team,” he said. “It’s making sure that they are making other people better, not just themselves. I think that’s the most important thing for a good football player.”When will we get a WSL winner?No Women’s Super League player has won the Ballon d’Or since its introduction in 2018. In 2021, Chelsea’s Sam Kerr finished third, 140 points behind Putellas, who also beat Arsenal’s Beth Mead the year Mead won the Golden Boot and Player of the Tournament in England’s successful home Euros campaign. Kerr finished second in 2023. Last year, the year of Arsenal’s most recent Champions League win and England’s Euros defence, Spain’s Mariona Caldentey and England’s Alessia Russo took second and third respectively behind Barcelona and Spain midfielder Aitana Bonmatí. Five of Manchester City’s title winners made the shortlist this year, including Khadija ‘Bunny’ Shaw, who earned a record third successive Golden Boot as City claimed their first title in 10 years. However, Putellas is this year’s favourite again after a three-year hiatus of watching Bonmatí win the title. She returned 20 goals from 43 Barcelona appearances last season, contributing seven goals and seven assists to Barcelona’s fourth Champions League win and winning a domestic treble. While Putellas is now London City Lionesses’ captain, the caveat is that those trophies were won with Barcelona. “I think a team in England has to mark themselves even more in the Champions League,” said one jury voter. “But the season to come, with there being a World Cup next summer, with England or another nation that has WSL players marking themselves there, (a WSL winner) could definitely be possible. But we’ve been living in Aitana Bonmatí’s world for quite a few years, so it’s been difficult to surpass her.”“You have to be producing in and winning those tournaments,” added another voter. “If you take someone like Bunny Shaw, we all know she is probably one of, if not the best striker in the world. I think where she falls down in terms of voting is that in those major years, she’s not playing for a national team to the same level that other players are. Last year, she wasn’t in the Champions League. You have to be competing at those kinds of levels to really be considered at the very top.”Still, the WSL has a reputation as one of the most demanding global leagues. When one journalist put to Jeglertz that the Ballon d’Or tends to prize the Champions League over domestic records, Jeglertz underlined the difficulty of competing in, let alone winning, the WSL.“We are in the best league. The best players are here. We compete on a very high level every week. I wouldn’t say that all leagues in Europe or in the world are like that. I definitely think people playing and coaching in our league who manage to win should always be highlighted somehow. I definitely think that that’s the level of this league.”How important is the Champions League?Critics of the five collective wins from Barcelona players (Putellas two, Bonmatí 3) often point to their lack of competition in the Primera División — they have finished top in the last seven seasons — as the difficulty in weighing the two leagues against each other, a conundrum borne out across a shortlist that, this year, takes in 12 clubs across seven different leagues.“Someone like (Barcelona goalkeeper) Cata Coll can rack up a lot of clean sheets. How do you actually rank that when Barcelona are kind of running away with things in the domestic league?” one voter asked. “It’s different things you have to weigh and consider when it comes to domestic leagues.”Against that backdrop, the Champions League becomes the most obvious leveller between European clubs.“That’s the only stage where the teams from different nations get to measure up against each other,” said one European voter. “That’s the clash of the titans, so I think that’s what tips it for a lot of voters. It’s the competition that I value highest when I decide.”That a Barcelona player has won for the last five years, three of which coincided with Champions League wins, suggests this is not an isolated view. It also underlines the controversy of Bonmatí’s third win, in 2025, ahead of Arsenal’s Caldentey and Russo, who delivered Arsenal’s first Champions League win in the WSL era.Issues of representation and resourceA frequent criticism of the Ballon d’Or Feminin is its focus on European teams, impacting the profile and earning potential of those players. “I’m interested to see how the Asian Cup has impacted the top 10,” one voter said. “The Euros and World Cup get such a big contingent of media. WAFCON and the Asian Cup don’t get nearly the same coverage.” They also pointed out that not all media companies have the resources to send journalists to cover more unfamiliar leagues or tournaments.“At the Champions League final between Barcelona and Lyon a couple of years ago, the English (press) contingent was the largest after the Spanish,” they said. “Until that happens elsewhere, there are always going to be a few players missed off. It’s investment and it’s coverage.“There’s a bit of a way to go in terms of getting the visibility up enough so that you’re not just reading a Wikipedia page that tells you that Bonmatí won the UEFA Player of the Tournament. You are actually looking at what’s gone on and watching those tournaments.”In that vacuum, there is sometimes a suspicion that big women’s sports awards are determined by recognisability as much as performance. What follows is a smaller, exclusive circle of players able to wager their profile and accolades for commercial gain in an already precarious industry.“Ada Hegerberg will forever have that stamp on her of being the first Ballon d’Or winner,” said one voter. “When you go to Mastercard or Hublot, who she has sponsorship deals with, it makes it easier to get those kind of deals. It’s marked her career.”This article originally appeared in The Athletic.Women's Soccer2026 The Athletic Media Company