Harry Kane won the Ballon d’Or two weeks earlier, and Haaland has beaten him to the last place in the FIFPRO World 11
The players’ team of the year was announced on Monday with Lionel Messi in it for an 18th time and no room for the Bayern Munich striker.
Nov 10, 2026
Harry Kane got 27.6 per cent of the forwards’ vote. Erling Haaland got 28.4 per cent, and that was the difference between the Ballon d’Or winner making the 2026 FIFPRO Men’s World 11 and missing it.
The team, picked by 19,806 professional footballers from 73 countries, was announced on Monday, 14 days after Kane won the Ballon d’Or in London. Haaland, Kylian Mbappé, Lionel Messi and Lamine Yamal are the forwards. Kane, the Bundesliga’s Player of the Season Michael Olise and every other Bayern Munich player are not in it.
How Haaland got the last place
Each player who voted picked three names in each position: goalkeeper, defender, midfielder and forward. FIFPRO takes the top goalkeeper, the top three defenders, midfielders and forwards, and then gives the last place to the outfield player with the most votes left.
Mbappé led the forwards with 46 per cent, more than any other outfield player in the ballot, followed by Yamal on 37.4 and Messi on 29.5. That left one place, and Haaland beat Kane to it by 0.8 points. It could hardly have been closer, and it still leaves the Ballon d’Or winner out of the team his fellow players picked.
Kane’s case was the same one that won him the Ballon d’Or. He scored 73 goals for club and country in 2025-26, and Bayern won the Bundesliga and then the DFB-Pokal, where his hat-trick beat Stuttgart 3-0 in the final. The players who voted judged performances between 4 August 2025 and 19 July 2026, and anyone with fewer than 30 official appearances in that time was not eligible.
Messi’s 18th
Messi is back in the team for the first time since 2023. It is his 18th World 11, a record, and he was first picked in 2007, the year Yamal and Pau Cubarsí were born.
Yamal is now the first player to make the World 11 twice before turning 20. Cubarsí is in it for the first time, at centre-back with Achraf Hakimi and Nuno Mendes, and on the same day he was named the Golden Boy, the award for Europe’s best under-21 player.
Arsenal’s David Raya was the most-voted player of all, in goal with 10,278 votes and a 52 per cent share. Jude Bellingham, Rodri and Vitinha are the midfielders. Rodri was at Manchester City for the voting period and joined Barcelona in August.
Raya, Cubarsí and Rodri all won the World Cup with Spain in July, and Spain now have 53 Men’s World 11 places in all, more than any other country. Paris Saint-Germain have three players in the team: Hakimi, Mendes and Vitinha.