What is the Super Ballon d’Or? Football’s rarest award, given once in 1989

The Super Ballon d’Or is the rarest individual prize in football. France Football created it as a one-off in 1989 to name the best player of the previous three decades, and it has never been awarded since — one winner in the whole history of the game.

So far only one has been handed out. Real Madrid forward Alfredo Di Stéfano received the Super Ballon d’Or on 24 December 1989, finishing ahead of Dutch great Johan Cruyff in second and French legend Michel Platini in third.

Alfredo Di Stéfano, revered as one of the most prolific strikers of his generation, scored 308 goals in 396 appearances for Real Madrid. 

During his decade-long stay in the Spanish capital, Di Stéfano won two Ballon d’Ors, one Intercontinental Cup, two Copa Latinas, eight La Liga titles, one Copa de Espana, five consecutive European Cups between 1956 and 1960 and a Small Club World Cup.

Given his remarkable collection of trophies, he was handed the elusive Super Ballon d’Or award 

The public voted for someone else

The vote is the part of this story that almost never gets told, and it did not go one way. It was decided by three groups. France Football’s own jury put Di Stéfano top on 11 points. The panel of former Ballon d’Or winners also put him top, on 8. But the readers and viewers who took part chose Platini, and not narrowly — he took 54.12% of that vote.

The two expert panels outweighed the public one, so the award went to Di Stéfano and Platini finished third overall. It is the clearest illustration of what the prize was actually for: not the player the audience of 1989 remembered most fondly, but the one the people who had covered and won the award themselves rated highest across three decades.

At that time, the Super Ballon d’Or award was planned to be given to the best European footballer. However, Di Stéfano won it despite being born in Argentina as he held a Spanish passport.

Meanwhile the Ballon d’Or itself was first handed out in 1956, when Blackpool’s Stanley Matthews won it. Lionel Messi has won it a record eight times and Cristiano Ronaldo five, the most of any player.

Two of the three men on the 1989 Super Ballon d’Or shortlist are on that list — Cruyff and Platini on three each. Di Stéfano himself won two Ballon d’Ors, in 1957 and 1959, which is part of why the 1989 result surprised people.

Will there ever be a second Super Ballon d’Or?

Thirty-six years on, there has still only been one, and France Football has never announced a second. What it has done is keep the idea alive: the official Ballon d’Or account raised the prospect in June 2025, asking followers who they would pick, and a repeat around 2029 — forty years on from Di Stéfano’s — is the date most often floated. None of that is a confirmed plan, and anything you read giving a firm date for the next one is a guess.

If it does come back, the shortlist writes itself. Lionel Messi has the eight Ballon d’Ors and the World Cup as well — he completed the set in Qatar in December 2022, scoring seven and taking the Golden Ball. Cristiano Ronaldo has five Ballon d’Ors and the all-time goalscoring records but never won a World Cup, going out at the 2022 quarter-final stage to Morocco and again in the 2026 last 16 to Spain. Kylian Mbappé is the name usually added as the candidate from the generation after them.

What has happened to the Ballon d’Or since

The regular award has moved on, and away from the two names that dominated it for fifteen years. Messi won his eighth in 2023. Rodri took the 2024 award after Manchester City and Spain’s season, and Ousmane Dembélé won the 69th edition in 2025, ahead of Lamine Yamal. The 2026 award has not been handed out yet.

For more on the argument the Super Ballon d’Or was invented to settle, read our pieces on who the king of football really is and the players who have won the most trophies in the game.

Photo credit: Alamy