Michel Platini

Platini won the Ballon d'Or in 1983, 1984 and 1985 consecutively, the only three-in-a-row in the award's history until Lionel Messi went one better with four across the merged years. The middle of those seasons is the one history keeps on a plinth: nine goals at Euro 84, a tournament record that still stands, won at home, captained by him, delivered with the coolness of a man closing a business deal he had drafted himself.

He was a midfielder who finished like a striker and took free kicks like a golfer. Juventus built a decade around him, and he repaid them with the 1985 European Cup — a final forever shadowed by Heysel. He later ran football itself, FIFA and UEFA, until affairs of governance ended that career in ways the playing one never was. But between 1982 and 1986 he was simply the best footballer in the world, every year, and the Ballon d'Or said so three times without interruption.