{"id":816100,"date":"2026-10-28T03:12:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T03:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/816100\/"},"modified":"2026-10-28T03:12:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T03:12:10","slug":"kanes-ballon-dor-triumph-a-glorious-riposte-to-celebrity-fawning-of-ceremony-ballon-dor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/816100\/","title":{"rendered":"Kane\u2019s Ballon d\u2019Or triumph a glorious riposte to celebrity fawning of ceremony | Ballon d’Or"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, there\u2019s something new. Football: now available in new, genuinely heartwarming flavour.<\/p>\n

There was a lovely moment at London\u2019s Palladium theatre on Monday, with the clock creeping towards 11pm at the end of a startlingly shrill and bloated evening of never\u2011ending awards and never-ending award\u2011related excitement.<\/p>\n

Not just for Harry Kane, who is now the 2026 men\u2019s Ballon d\u2019Or winner<\/a>, and in the process placed indelibly in that lineage of elite footballers. But also, frankly, for anyone watching, as Kane stood on stage gazing a little shyly at his golden orb, and kicked off his speech by thanking everyone, paying tribute to everyone, everywhere, then finally cracking into tears and a strangled croak as he thanked his parents for sacrifices made, his wife for always being there, and even, in slightly jarring vibe-shift from the warm honeyed tone, Jos\u00e9 Mourinho.<\/p>\n

\"HarryHarry Kane triumphs with historic Ballon d\u2019Or win – The Latest<\/p>\n

Even Kane\u2019s biggest advocates will rarely claim their man is one of a kind, sui generis, in the mode of the Ronaldo-Messi godhead. But Kane is exactly this in his own admirably humble way.<\/p>\n

Not just an exceptional footballer, the best, most deserving men\u2019s player in the world this year, a European golden boot, scorer of 89 goals since August 2025, Bundesliga champion<\/a>, World Cup semi-final captain, model of extreme professionalism and care. He\u2019s also quite clearly the nicest man, if not just in football, then possibly the world.<\/p>\n

Or at least it felt like that as he walked off in that very dear and tender way, the centre of the world in that moment, but also just keen to get off the stage and let everyone get on with clearing up.<\/p>\n

It would be wrong to say Kane\u2019s victory in the final vote of the night redeemed the grotesqueness of the ceremonies itself. There was a roomful of hugely deserving winners here. But Kane hits particularly hard.<\/p>\n

Alexia Putellas and Harry Kane pose with their trophies at the end of the 2026 Ballon d\u2019Or awards ceremony in London. Photograph: Tolga Akmen\/EPA<\/p>\n

And the Ballon d\u2019Or is, let us be clear, a horrendous event, albeit a supremely popular horrendous event. There was the usual pomp around the ceremony, staged this year at a fancy theatre close to Oxford Circus.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t sport. It\u2019s celebrity culture, red\u2011carpet fawning, the worship of images and people, and fame. Football isn\u2019t supposed to be cocooned this way, to send the message that there are barriers and ropes and special people. Yeah, well, good luck with that.<\/p>\n

The night kicked off with French Montana in spotless white tuxedo performing on an open-air double-decker bus. He definitely speaks, clearly, carried well, seemed enthusiastic. If it all goes south from here, the evidence suggests French Montana could, at the very least, get a job as a London tour bus operator.<\/p>\n

French Montana performs during Ballon d\u2019Or award ceremony in London. Photograph: Rasid Necati Aslim\/Anadolu\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Before long Thierry Henry and Kate Scott glided on stage, half an hour late, to add a little deft and easy charm to a furious schedule of pots and prizes.<\/p>\n

And the awards came thick and fast. The Spain manager, Luis de la Fuente, was named coach of the year. \u201cI hope in the future I will become in English better,\u201d were his first words at the lectern, throwing his hat in the ring for a disastrous pension-padding six months at Manchester United two years from now.<\/p>\n

There was a lovely moment as Burna Boy came on to present the Socrates award for charitable works to Bukayo Saka. He was asked if there were footballers who had inspired his love for the game. At which point he looked at Thierry and said, \u201cdefinitely, one of them\u2019s standing right there\u201d, and of course he said it in his Burna Boy voice, looking Thierry deep in the eyes so smooth and deep, just almost an impossibly sexy moment.<\/p>\n

The Ballon d\u2019Or can be unintentionally hilarious at times such as these. There were just so, so many video tributes, so much excitingly portentous music. This is a stage where everyone happening at every moment is very clearly the most important thing ever to happen, superseded only by the next thing to happen on that stage, and then the thing after that.<\/p>\n

The hosts of the ceremony: Kate Scott and Thierry Henry. Photograph: Matthew Childs\/Action Images\/Reuters<\/p>\n

The degree of fawning is startling at first, but glazed by familiarity before long. At one point Cristiano Ronaldo appeared very briefly in a fact-cut big-screen montage and the crowd shrieked a song, clutched its hand to its fevered throat, collapsed into the aisles in sheer priapic excitement.<\/p>\n

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Although by the time the original Ronaldo emerged onstage at 10.44pm, there was a sense of the genuinely vertiginous company Kane was about to join. Ronaldo read out the name inside the envelope, and the hall collapsed into cheers and yells and roars as Kane appeared onstage.<\/p>\n

And yes the Ballon d\u2019Or is a fundamentally silly thing on its own terms. It jars with the basic concept of team sport, promoting instead the opposite of sport, the opposite of team culture, the modern disease of fawning parasocial engagement with star names. In many ways the world would be a better place if the Ballon d\u2019Or was simply abolished, as an example to all who pore over reels and clips and the imagined qualities of their celebrity paramours.<\/p>\n

But it is also fascinating, unignorable, and endlessly moreish. All the more so this time. Kane as the Ballon d\u2019Or 2026 is a genuinely fine, uplifting, instructive moment in the spotlight.<\/p>\n

Bukayo Saka delivers his speech after accepting the S\u00f3crates award from Burna Boy. Photograph: Jeff Spicer\/Uefa\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

It is always tempting to talk about the journey these players make. Everyone has a backstory. Most footballers come from adversity. Kane has this, in his own way, 16 years into a professional career which has names such as Leyton Orient, Millwall, Leicester and Norwich on the timelines. He was unexceptional as a junior, didn\u2019t stand out as particularly skilful or big or outstanding in his numbers. He played as a holding midfielder for a bit while Spurs decided what to do with him.<\/p>\n

Kane worked relentlessly. He was Millwall young player of the year in 2012, fitting bookend to the Ballon. He made it because he simply refused to go away, to stop working, honed instead the deeper skills in his quiver, the purity of his shooting, the range of his passing long and short.<\/p>\n

And Kane is exceptional in other ways. Without ever peacocking around promoting his brand, without really trying he remains the most likable, authentic, role\u2011model\u2011ish modern-day England<\/a> player. For a man who never talks big or acts big he has a happy knack of becoming the key player wherever he goes. Perhaps Kane has become cool now. He has always been likable, with that mild-mannered air of a kindly Victorian chimney sweep with a hamster in his waistcoat watch pocket. In the Bayern years, Kane has become leaner, more glossed and handsome, jawline, tan, iconic Vampire hairline.<\/p>\n

Mainly he expresses a common confusion about what talent really is. Talent isn\u2019t simply moments. Talent is also application, focus, craft, the ability to work, to make others better.<\/p>\n

Harry Kane celebrates after scoring a penalty against Paris Saint-Germain in last season\u2019s Champions League. Photograph: Christophe Ena\/AP<\/p>\n

And yet his elite career has also been oddly grudging. Somehow the idea has always been out there that Kane is undeserving of these accolades, despite his own mildness and humility, his obvious team qualities, his relentless delivery of goals, effort, leadership. It is a genuinely odd conclusion given the opposite is so manifestly true, that this is an entirely uplifting story of overachievement, of hard work and applied intelligence, as opposed to the kind of talent that just needs to be flame\u2011throwered in the right direction.<\/p>\n

It is undeniably true that Kane\u2019s levels can drop dramatically when he can\u2019t perform at his full physical capacity. There have been moments where it has been tempting to wonder if he\u2019s gone far enough as England\u2019s captain in the past few years, if his body and his talent deserve a little care.<\/p>\n

Well, that just shows how wrong you can be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Well, there\u2019s something new. Football: now available in new, genuinely heartwarming flavour. There was a lovely moment at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":816101,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[59,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-816100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-gb","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=816100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/816101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=816100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=816100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=816100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}