Harry Kane Crowned Ballon d'Or Winner in London
Harry Kane has won the Ballon d'Or, the award for the best player in football over the previous season. He received it at a ceremony in London, becoming the first Englishman to win it since Michael Owen in 2001. BBC Sport reported the win.
That is a long wait for England. Kane is the fifth Englishman to win the award in total. He is also the first Bayern Munich player to win it since Karl-Heinz Rummenigge in 1981.
Bayern is the German club Kane joined from Tottenham, and the numbers behind his season are huge. He scored 61 goals in 51 club matches, the most any Bayern player has scored in a single season. Including his England games, he finished with 73 goals and eight assists in 65 matches. An assist is the pass that sets up a goal.
He was the top scorer in the Bundesliga, Germany's top division, with 36 goals. That was 17 more than anyone else in the league. He also scored 14 goals in the Champions League, Europe's biggest club competition, and 10 in the German Cup. Three of those cup goals came in the final, a 3-0 win over Stuttgart.
For England, he scored 12 goals last season, six of them at the World Cup. The World Cup goals took him to the top of England's all-time list at the tournament, with his 11th goal in a 2-0 win over Panama. Earlier this month, against Czechia, he earned his 125th England cap, equalling the national record.
Kane was also one of the nominees for the 2026 award, which is decided by a vote. For a striker who spent so long being told he would never win a major trophy with his country, this one feels personal. It is a reward for years of scoring goals, and for a career that keeps getting longer.
Football fans will also remember the moment for what it says about the game. A player who began his career in north London has now been crowned the best in the world in Germany. Kane's name now sits beside some of the sport's great forwards, and he will head into the next season as the man everyone else is chasing.
