The Ballon d'Or Award is an annual award for the best international football player, awarded by a panel of selected journalists from the top football playing countries.

Who was predicted to win the Ballon d'Or in 2021? Leading up to the ceremony, this was a hotly debated topic, and there was a lot of speculation. We published lists of which players were predicted to win, and now we know the answer we can compare the predicted with the actual results.

Men's Ballon d'Or 2021

How did the top football websites rank the contenders? We collated the opinions of a few of the top football websites to compare. The favorite in 2021 was Lionel Messi to win his seventh award. Robert Lewandowski was also predicted to be up there too. Both predictions were found to be correct.

  1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th
ACTUAL Lionel Messi Robert Lewandowski Jorginho Karim Benzema N'Golo Kanté
goal.com Lionel Messi Robert Lewandowski Jorginho N'Golo Kanté Kylian Mbappé
fourfourtwo.com Lionel Messi Robert Lewandowski Mo Salah Jorginho N'Golo Kanté
footballgroundguide.com Robert Lewandowski Lionel Messi Mo Salah Jorginho Karim Benzema
BeMyBet Lionel Messi Robert Lewandowski Mo Salah Karim Benzema Jorginho
footyaccumulators.com Kylian Mbappé Robert Lewandowski Cristiano Ronaldo Bruno Fernandes Kevin De Bruyne