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Memory Lane: Ballon d'Or winners down the years in pictures | Football

Memory Lane: Ballon d'Or winners down the years – in pictures

Ahead of the announcement of the winner of the 2016 Fifa Ballon d’Or, we take a look at some of the winners of its previous incarnation, when it was just the plain old Ballon d’Or aka the European Footballer of the Year. The annual award was presented by France Football after being conceived by chief magazine writer Gabriel Hanot and honoured the player deemed to have performed the best over the previous year, based on a voting by Europe-based journalists

Mon 11 Jan 2016 09.52 EST Last modified on Mon 20 Feb 2017 07.06 EST

  • 1956

    The inaugural winner of the Ballon d’Or was Blackpool’s Stanley Matthews

  • 1957-1959

    Santiago Bernabéu, the President of Real Madrid, would have been a proud man during these years as Alfredo Di Stefano, left, won the award twice in 1957 and 1959 and Raymond Kopa, right, won the prize in 1958

  • 1960

    Barcelona’s Luis Suárez (no, not that one)

  • 1961

    Juventus’ Omar Sivori

  • 1962

    Dukla Prague’s Josef Masopust become the first player from Eastern Europe to win the prestigious Ballon d’Or

  • 1963

    Dynamo Moscow’s Lev Yashin

  • 1964

    Manchester United striker Denis Law receives his award

  • 1966

    Two years later it was Law’s Manchester United team-mate Bobby Charlton’s turn to recieve the award from Max Urbini, editor in chief of France Football magazine

  • 1968

    Max Urbini, left, was back at Old Trafford two years later, this time to present the award to George Best, centre. Previous winners Bobby Charlton, second left, and Denis Law, right, look on as does Manchester United manager Matt Busby

  • 1969

    Next it was Gianni Rivera of Milan’s turn to show off the trophy to the fans

  • 1971, 1973 and 1974

    Johan Cruyff of Ajax. The Dutch master was the first player to win the award three times, his second and third triumphs came when he was playing for Barcelona

  • 1972 and 1975

    Bayern Munich captain Franz Beckenbauer was a double winner of the award

  • 1978 and 1979

    Another double winner from the Bundesliga, Hamburg’s Kevin Keegan. France Football may have bestowed Keegan the honour of the best player in Europe but the Hamburg fans went one better and thought of him as more regal

  • 1983, 1984 and 1985

    Juventus’ Michel Platini became the second player to win it on three occasions and the only player to have won it three consecutive times

  • 1986

    Igor Belanov of Dynamo Kyiv

  • 1988, 1989 and 1992

    The last player to win a hat-trick of European Football Player of the year titles was Milan’s Marco van Basten

  • 1993

    Juventus’ Roberto Baggio

  • 1995

    Since the award’s inception in 1956 only European players were in contention for the award however the rules were changed in 1995 so that all players at European clubs were eligible, regardless of their birthplace. Milan’s George Weah was the first beneficiary of the rule change

  • 1997

    Internazionale’s 21-year-old striker Ronaldo became the youngest player and the first South American ever to win the award

  • 1998

    Zinedine Zidane topped off a fine World Cup winning year with the Ballon d’Or

  • 2000

    The first winner of the new century was Real Madrid’s Luis Figo

  • 2004

    Milan’s Andriy Shevchenko places the Golden Ball trophy he received as European Player of the Year next to the statue in Kiev of legendary Ukrainian coach Valery Lobanovsky, who coached Shevchenko when he was playing for Dynamo Kiev before moving to Italy

  • 2006

    Real Madrid’s World Cup winning defender Fabio Cannavaro was presented with this award by actress Monica Bellucci

  • 2009

    The Ballon d’Or changed in scope in 2007 from an honour bestowed on Europe-based players by Europe-based journalists to one open to all players and voted on by journalists from around the world. In 2010 the plain old monikered Ballon d’Or was merged with a similar award, the FIFA World Player of the Year award, to create the FIFA Ballon d’Or, the glitzy behemoth we know today. The last player to win the France Football magazine’s prestigious award as Europe’s top player was Barcelona’s Lionel Messi, will he also prove victorious in 2016?
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