Kaká

Kaká's 2007 was the last individual season of the pre-duopoly era: the Champions League won almost single-handedly for AC Milan — ten goals, the competition's top scorer, the destroyer of Manchester United at Old Trafford and a masterclass in the final against Liverpool in Athens — and the Ballon d'Or taken with a comfortable margin over a 22-year-old Messi and a 22-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo.

He was a strange and beautiful outlier: a devout Christian playmaker who ran like a sprinter, upright and long-strided, gliding through gaps that did not exist until he arrived at them. A spinal fracture in adolescence had nearly ended everything before it began; he played, famously, without fear. He would be the last winner before the Messi–Ronaldo decade and a half began its stranglehold, which makes his year a kind of full stop — the final chapter of football before it became a two-man book.