Curated playlist
Ballon d'Or winners
- Michael OwenMichael Owen scored one of the most talked-about goals in England's football history at the age of eighteen. Running from near the halfway line against Argentina at the 1998 World Cup, he beat two defenders and drove the ball past the…
- Lionel MessiLionel Andrés Messi was born on the 24th of June 1987 in Rosario, a city in the Santa Fe Province of Argentina. By the time he was ten years old, doctors had told his family he would stop growing. His body could not produce enough growth…
- Luka ModrićLuka Modrić scored the only goal against Chelsea on the 21st of March 2009, a composed finish that silenced those who had called him a lightweight unfit for English football. He was just twenty-three, playing out of position, still…
- Ronaldo (Brazilian footballer)Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima scored five goals for Cruzeiro in a single game against Bahia on the 7th of November 1993. He was 17 years old. The Brazilian football federation would soon be calling him a prodigy, European clubs would soon…
- Gerd MüllerGerd Müller scored 68 goals in 62 international appearances for West Germany. That is not a misprint. Most top-level strikers celebrate if they average a goal every two games. Müller averaged more than one per game, across an entire…
- Cristiano RonaldoCristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro was born on the 5th of February 1985 in the São Pedro parish of Funchal, the capital of the Portuguese island of Madeira. His mother, a cook and cleaning woman, wanted to abort him. Her doctor refused.…
- Zinedine ZidaneZinedine Zidane scored two goals in the 1998 World Cup Final, both headers, both from corners, in front of the entire world. France beat Brazil 3-0 that night at the Stade de France. More than one million people lined the Champs-Elysees…
- Paolo RossiPaolo Rossi was born on the 23rd of September 1956 in Prato, Tuscany, in the area of Santa Lucia. Twenty-six years later, he stood at the centre of one of the most improbable recoveries in World Cup history. The question that summer in…
- Lev YashinLev Yashin won the Ballon d'Or in 1963 as a goalkeeper. That sentence alone deserves a pause. In the entire history of that award, given annually to the finest footballer in Europe, not one keeper before him had claimed it. Not one keeper…
- EusébioEusébio da Silva Ferreira grew up barefoot in the Mafalala neighbourhood of Lourenço Marques, kicking balls made of socks stuffed with newspapers rolled into spheres. By the time he walked off a Wembley pitch in 1966, tears streaming down…
- Flórián AlbertFlórián Albert stood on a pitch in England in 1966, and made a crowd forget about Pelé. That is not a small claim. Hungary were facing Brazil in a must-win World Cup group match, and Albert, who had already claimed the Ballon d'Or the…
- Franz BeckenbauerFranz Beckenbauer lifted the World Cup trophy as a captain in 1974, then lifted it again as a manager in 1990. Only two other men in football history, Brazil's Mario Zagallo and France's Didier Deschamps, have ever done the same. The fans…
- Hristo StoichkovHristo Stoichkov was born on the 8th of February 1966 in Plovdiv, a city in southern Bulgaria, and he would grow up to be named by Pele himself as one of the hundred greatest living footballers on earth. That honor came in 2004, a decade…
- Lothar MatthäusLothar Matthäus was born on the 21st of March 1961 in Erlangen, Bavaria, to a father who had fled across the Oder River in 1944 ahead of the Soviet advance. That backstory of escape and reinvention threads quietly through everything that…
- Michel PlatiniMichel Platini scored nine goals in five matches at the 1984 European Championship, a record that stood for 37 years. That tournament, played on home soil in France, became the defining image of a career built on intelligence rather than…