FIFA World Cup awards

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  At the end of every FIFA World Cup, a ceremony takes place that most viewers barely notice amid the chaos of the final whistle and the trophy lift. FIFA World Cup awards hand out recognition across eight separate prizes, each tracking a different dimension of the game. Who scored the most goals? Who kept the most clean sheets? Which teenager electrified the tournament? Which team played the fairest? These are the questions the awards try to answer. Some of the prizes date back to 1970. Others were introduced as recently as 2006. A few have been renamed, rebranded, and quietly reshuffled over the decades. Behind each award sits a small argument about what the game actually values. And occasionally, one player wins so many of them that the argument seems settled. At the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, Lionel Messi accumulated eleven Player of the Match awards across four tournaments, more than any other player in history. That number alone tells a story worth unpacking.

• 2. The Golden Ball

  ›

  Paolo Rossi walked away from the 1982 World Cup in Spain with two prizes: the Golden Boot for top scorer, and the Golden Ball as the tournament's best player. That first edition set a standard the award has chased ever since. The Golden Ball is chosen by media representatives who vote from a shortlist drawn up by the FIFA Technical Study Group. The runners-up receive a Silver Ball and a Bronze Ball. Oliver Kahn is the only goalkeeper to have ever won it, which he did in South Korea and Japan in 2002. Goalkeepers remain eligible, but only Kahn has broken through. Lionel Messi won the award in 2014 in Brazil and then again in Qatar in 2022, becoming the first player to claim a second Golden Ball. The 2022 final standings placed Kylian Mbappé second and Luka Modrić third, the same Modrić who had won the award outright in Russia in 2018. Before 1982, no official award existed, though a group of journalists and experts did select Mario Kempes as the best player of the 1978 tournament in Argentina, a selection FIFA now recognises on its website.

• 3. The Golden Boot

  ›

  Just Fontaine scored 13 goals at the 1958 World Cup in Sweden, a record that still stands. The tournament had top-scorer rankings from the very beginning, but the first time an actual trophy was handed out was at the 1982 World Cup in Spain, under the name Golden Shoe. The award was renamed the Golden Boot in 2010. When multiple players finish level on goals, the tie goes to whichever player has more assists since 1994. If the tie remains, the player who scored those goals in fewer minutes, since 2006, is ranked higher. The 1994 tournament produced a shared winner: Oleg Salenko and Hristo Stoichkov both finished with six goals and the award was split between them. Kylian Mbappé led all scorers at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar with eight goals, finishing ahead of Lionel Messi on seven and Olivier Giroud on four. Silver Boot and Bronze Boot awards go to the second and third-highest scorers respectively.

• 4. Goalkeepers and Fair Play

  ›

  The Golden Glove was introduced at the 1994 World Cup in the United States under a different name: the Lev Yashin Award, honouring the late Soviet goalkeeper widely regarded as the greatest in history. The award recognised Michel Preud'homme that year, who kept two clean sheets. Fabien Barthez won it in France in 1998 with five clean sheets, a mark matched by Oliver Kahn in 2002. The FIFA Technical Study Group evaluates goalkeeper performance across the whole competition, not just a single match. The name changed to Golden Glove in 2010, when Iker Casillas claimed it with five clean sheets. Emiliano Martínez won the award in Qatar in 2022 with three clean sheets, helping Argentina to the title. Separate from the goalkeeping prize, the FIFA Fair Play Trophy has been awarded since 1970 to the team with the best disciplinary record among those reaching the second round. The winners receive a diploma, a fair play medal for every player and official, and fifty thousand dollars' worth of football equipment earmarked for youth development. Peru was the first country to win it in 1970, having gone through the tournament without a single yellow or red card.

• 5. Young Players and Fan Votes

  ›

  Lukas Podolski of Germany was the first winner of what was then called the Best Young Player Award, at the 2006 World Cup in his home country. The prize goes to the best player in the tournament who is at most 21 years old; at Qatar 2022, that meant the player had to have been born on or after the 1st of January 2001. Only three times has the winner of the Young Player Award also been part of the winning team: Pelé in Sweden in 1958, Kylian Mbappé in Russia in 2018, and Enzo Fernández in Qatar in 2022. FIFA also conducted a retrospective internet survey to identify the best young player of each tournament between 1958 and 2002. Pelé won that poll with 61 percent of the overall vote. The Player of the Match award operates differently. Introduced in 2002 under the name Man of the Match, it picks one outstanding performer from every match in the tournament. Since 2010 it has been decided by an online public poll on FIFA's website. Lionel Messi collected five Player of the Match awards at the 2022 World Cup alone, the most by any player at a single tournament.

• 6. Goals and Entertainment

  ›

  Maxi Rodríguez scored in the 98th minute of extra time in a 2006 round-of-16 match, and that goal was later chosen as the Goal of the Tournament, the first time the award was given. The prize has since gone to Diego Forlán in 2010, James Rodríguez in 2014, Benjamin Pavard in 2018, and Richarlison in 2022, the last of those in the 73rd minute of a group-stage match. FIFA's YouTube channel later ran unofficial votes identifying the greatest goals from earlier tournaments, selecting Carlos Alberto's finish in the 1970 final, Diego Maradona's solo run in the 1986 quarter-finals, and Roberto Baggio's effort in a 1990 group game. A separate prize, the Most Entertaining Team award, is determined by public poll and has been given out since 1994. The All-Star Team, which once formed part of the official post-tournament programme under the MasterCard brand between 1994 and 2006, was discontinued as an official FIFA award from 2010 onward; all team selections since then have been explicitly labelled unofficial by FIFA itself.