Nigeria\u2019s representative in the 2026 men\u2019s Ballon d\u2019Or voting ranked Spanish midfielder Rodri as the best player in the world, despite the Manchester City star finishing fourth in the overall standings.\n<\/p>\n
The voting breakdown released by France Football on Friday showed that Nigeria was among 10 countries whose journalists placed Rodri first in their ballots.\n<\/p>\n
The other countries were the United States, Guatemala, South Korea, the Czech Republic, Serbia, Thailand, Vietnam, Croatia and Iceland.\n<\/p>\n
Rodri finished fourth overall with 726 points, behind Bayern Munich striker Harry Kane, who won the award with 1,055 points, Real Madrid forward Kylian Mbapp\u00e9, who had 1,027 points, and Barcelona youngster Lamine Yamal, who scored 881 points.<\/p>\n
Nigeria\u2019s voter also ranked Paris Saint-Germain forward Ousmane Demb\u00e9l\u00e9 second in the ballot. <\/p>\n
Demb\u00e9l\u00e9, who won the 2025 men\u2019s Ballon d\u2019Or, finished seventh in the 2026 edition and received no first-place votes from any of the 100 journalists who participated in the voting.<\/p>\n
He was placed second by voters from seven countries: Burkina Faso, China, France, Georgia, Haiti, North Macedonia and Nigeria.<\/p>\n
The Ballon d\u2019Or voting involved journalists from the 100 highest-ranked countries in the FIFA rankings, with each voter selecting 10 players from the shortlist.\n<\/p>\n
The players are awarded points according to their positions on each ballot, with 15 points for first place, 12 for second, 10 for third and progressively fewer points down to one point for 10th place.\n<\/p>\n
Kane won the award by 28 points ahead of Mbapp\u00e9, in the fourth-closest finish in the history of the men\u2019s Ballon d\u2019Or.\n <\/p>\n
Source: <\/p>\n
Nigeria\u2019s representative in the 2026 men\u2019s Ballon d\u2019Or voting ranked Spanish midfielder Rodri as the best player in the world, despite the Manchester City star finishing fourth in the overall… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4931\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}