Rodri

Rodri's 2024 Ballon d'Or is the award's most recent heresy: the first defensive midfielder to win it in the award's sixty-eight editions. The case was the era's least cinematic and most load-bearing — Manchester City's fourth consecutive league title (a thing no English club had done), the European Championship with Spain, where he was named player of the tournament, and a personal unbeaten run in club football that crossed a year and a half without his team losing a match he started.

His highlight reel is a silence: interceptions that arrive before the pass is imagined, one-touch releases that reverse the press, the same correct decision ten thousand times. The award has spent its history rewarding noise — goals, finals, flights of narrative. In 2024 it rewarded structure, and the ceremony's audience of forwards and wingers applauded the first holder many of them had spent careers trying to play around. He is the archive's final open file, updated annually.