Harry Kane did not make the Fifpro men’s World XI despite winning the 2026 Ballon d’Or, effectively the award for the best player in the world.
The Fifpro World XI is supposed to be a squad of the best players in the world at the time it is chosen. The selection is made by professional footballers from around the globe. So how ironic is it that Kane misses out?
The Bayern Munich striker was absent from the four-man forward line, which instead included Erling Haaland, Kylian Mbappe, Lionel Messi and Lamine Yamal. They were selected in a voting process involving 19,806 players from 73 countries.
There are two ways to look at this, and perhaps after that it would not be so confusing. First, the Ballon d’Or winner is not the best player in the world. The award was started in 1956 by sports writers Gabriel Hanot and Jacques Ferran for French magazine France Football, to be given to the player adjudged to have performed the best over the previous season.
In fact it was initially limited only to players from Europe and was also known as the European Footballer of the Year award. It was later expanded to players of any origin but still with the criterion that they had to be playing for a club in Europe.
The 2026 FIFPRO Men’s #World11 ✨
Decided exclusively by 19,806 professional men’s footballers worldwide.
By the players, for the players 🏆 https://t.co/MnHEMHxtf1
— FIFPRO (@FIFPRO) November 9, 2026
By 2007, it was finally expanded to include any player in world football. As the award reached the height of its popularity, Fifa came to an agreement with France Football to merge its own Fifa World Player of the Year with the Ballon d’Or.
This was in 2010. The partnership finally ended in 2015, Fifa again creating its own separate annual award, the Best Fifa Men’s Player.
So the Ballon d’Or should be seen as just a really popular award, the biggest individual prize in football, but it does not officially, or “factually” (as some fans have said), make any player the best in the world. Like any award, it has its own processes, along with the attendant biases as well.
So there is no reason why Kane, having won the Ballon d’Or, should automatically be included in the Fifpro XI, especially given how competitive it was in the first place (he won with only 28 points).
The second reason is exactly that: Kane may have won the Ballon d’Or but it was also very closely contested, and there is even the argument to make that his winning it was mostly because there was no true standout contestant, rather than his having particularly excelled and blown everyone else away.
