Rodri is one of the thirty men nominated for the 2026 Ballon d'Or. He won the award in 2024, he took the Golden Ball as the best player at this summer's World Cup, and he signed for Barcelona in August. Speaking to La Vanguardia, he has said his own club is backing somebody else.
"The club has come down on Lamine"
"The club has come down on Lamine because they understand he is the player who most deserves it, and it is entirely legitimate."
Barcelona have three players on the shortlist: Pau Cubarsí, Lamine Yamal and Rodri. Yamal said on Sunday that he and Kylian Mbappé are the two best players in the world and that he would deserve the award this year because of what he has won. Rodri is not arguing with any of it.
"A hundred journalists"
On his own candidacy he was flatter still.
"I have always said it: I have always played and competed to win titles at a collective level."
"I think individual titles do not depend on you. They depend on the decision, in this case, of a hundred journalists."
That is a description of the voting system rather than a complaint about it. It is also, from the man who has the strongest collective case of anyone on the list, a way of declining to make it.
On Yamal
He was warmer about the teammate his club has chosen ahead of him.
"Lamine is a kid with an overwhelming personality, with brutal confidence, who leads through his football, through his cheek, through what he projects on the pitch."
The Spanish argument
Rodri's one stated preference was national rather than personal.
"I would like a Spaniard to win it. I think Spanish football should be recognised again, because winning the World Cup is the biggest thing there is."
Spain won the World Cup in the summer and Rodri was named its best player. Fabián Ruiz, who won both the World Cup and the Champions League last season, made his own case to France Football by pointing at Rodri's 2024 win as the precedent for a midfielder taking the award.
Where that leaves him
Rodri arrived at Barcelona from Manchester City in August for sixty million euros with add-ons that can take the deal to around seventy six and a half. He has a World Cup, a Golden Ball and a previous Ballon d'Or, and he is the only one of the leading candidates who has spent the last week playing his chances down rather than up.
Mbappé told France Football there was no player better than him. Yamal told Movistar it is between the two of them. Dembélé said the trophy is staying at Paris Saint-Germain. Rodri said it depends on a hundred journalists.
The ceremony is on 26 October in London.
