Mohamed Salah robbed in Ballon d'Or rankings - Liverpool star is criminally disrespected

Not for the first time - there has been a robbery at the Ballon d'Or. Like Erling Haaland in 2023, Robert Lewandowski in 2020 and Thierry Henry in 2003 (among others) - Mohamed Salah's 2024-25 season was better than any other player on the planet. At the age of 32, entering the final year of his contract, Salah had an otherworldly season for Premier League champions Liverpool. The best of a brilliant career.

The Egyptian produced 57 goal contributions (34 goals and 23 assists) in 52 games across all competitions at club level. Only three of these came outside of the Premier League and Champions League. He managed at least one goal and one assist in the same Premier League match on 11 separate occasions.

No player has ever managed more combined goals and assists in a single season in England's top flight. Andy Cole and Alan Shearer both also tallied 47 in the mid-1990s. The difference? Cole played 40 league games, Shearer 42. Salah's came in a 38-game campaign. No wonder he was named the PFA Players' Player of the Year - by both his team-mates and his opponents - for a record third time.

Like Shearer, Salah's exploits delivered his team the title. He scored the most goals in the league and laid on the most assists. Take him away, the Reds do not win the league. It's that simple. Liverpool scored 86 times overall and Salah had a direct influence on exactly 54 per cent of those. That's not even including the other goals he was involved in the build-up for.

In the most competitive league in the world - one where the teams who finished 15th and 17th contested a major European final - Salah just ran riot. And him finishing fourth in the 2025 Ballon d'Or is an unfair reflection of just how good he was. There are actual winners of this award in the past 20 years who haven't had seasons as brilliant as Salah in 2024-25.

So is he just unlucky? Partly, yes. He had a better individual season than the three players above him - Vitinha, Lamine Yamal and Ousmane Dembele. But because PSG and Barcelona won more trophies as a team than Liverpool last season, they outrank the Egyptian - a player who will go into the Premier League all-time XI on the right wing by the time he leaves the league.

Of course, there is a argument to be made for Dembele being the rightful winner. He was a big factor in PSG's four trophies during the voting period, was a Club World Cup runner-up, and produced 35 goals and 16 assists in 53 games. He was excellent in the Champions League with goal contributions in every single knockout match bar the first leg against Liverpool. He scored away at Anfield and Arsenal.

But 34 of his other goal contributions came in French competitions. It's a fact that Ligue 1 and the Coupe de France do not stack up to the English competitions. Put Salah in the French league and it is scary to think of the numbers he could conjure up, especially in Luis Enrique's PSG side.

The Ballon d'Or doesn't just take into account goals and assists. But is that not another reason why Salah should be above his rivals? Egypt head coach Hossam Hassan said of Salah before the ceremony: "Considering the hardships he encountered along his journey, he deserves it.

"Based on the size of the challenges you overcome, he deserves it. Measuring years of brilliance, excellence and creativity in the strongest league in the world, he deserves it. It is difficult to get to the top, but all the difficulty lies in continuing on the top.

"And he has reached the top and continued on it for many years thanks to God first, then his talent, hard work and determination until he became a role model for all success seekers. Is it time for football to be fair and fair with them to choose the winner?"

Salah's chance of winning the Ballon d'Or now seems to have passed. He came sixth in 2018 despite a 44-goal season, then fifth in 2019, seventh in 2021, fifth again in 2022, 11th in 2023 and of course fourth this year.

Some of the players to finish higher than that in the last few years include... Antoine Griezmann (2016), Jorginho (2021), Vinicius Junior (2024). Salah is easily better than all three of those players.

Sadly, the Ballon d'Or rankings will never reflect that. He will surely go down as one of the best players never to win it, and one of the most disrespected players of all time. The fact he's never made the Ballon d'Or top three just underlines that.