Lev Yashin

In sixty-eight editions, the Ballon d'Or has gone to a goalkeeper exactly once. Yashin is that once. The Black Spider of Dynamo Moscow and the Soviet national team redefined the position: he came off his line when goalkeepers were nailed to it, he organised the defence when keepers were expected only to block, and he wore head-to-toe black so the striker's eye found nothing to read. The 1963 award arrived a year after he had backstopped the USSR to the European Championship.

The folklore credits him with around 150 saved penalties — a number from a pre-statistics age, unverifiable and entirely believed. FIFA now names its goalkeeper-of-the-tournament award after him at every World Cup, which is the institutional form of what everyone who saw him already knew: the position has a patron saint, he wore black, and the Ballon d'Or got it exactly right in 1963, once, forever.