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MADRID — Real Madrid manager Jose Mourinho has renewed his long-running criticism of how the Ballon d’Or is awarded, arguing football’s most prestigious individual honor should go to players whose legacies endure for decades rather than to those who happen to win the Champions League or a World Cup in a given season.

Mourinho made the comments during a press conference Saturday ahead of Real Madrid’s La Liga match against newly promoted Malaga at the Santiago Bernabeu, with this year’s Ballon d’Or ceremony approaching next month. “It’s a very beautiful thing individually and it goes into the individual history of a player,” Mourinho said, according to comments reported by Forbes. “It’s normal that the 12 players of a very high level, of which we have three or four, have the ambition to win it.”

The Portuguese coach then laid out his central argument for what should determine the winner. “For me, the Ballon d’Or has to go to one of those players who, when they retire, we miss them for eternity,” Mourinho said, according to Fabrizio Romano and multiple outlets covering the press conference. “Maradona, Cristiano, Messi, R9, Zidane… You can’t give the Ballon d’Or to a guy just for winning the UCL or the World Cup. If you should give it to someone just for winning the UCL, then give it to Luis Enrique.”

Mourinho went on to argue that the award should be reserved for the sport’s most dominant individual talents regardless of club affiliation or nationality, a pointed remark given that this year’s leading contenders reportedly include several Real Madrid players. “No, it needs to go to the best player in the world, not necessarily a Spanish guy, or a PSG player. It needs to go to one of the 3-4 best players in the world, and those guys are HERE,” Mourinho said, according to the same reporting, though he stopped short of naming any current player directly by name in that portion of his remarks.

The Real Madrid boss also took aim at what he described as political influence shaping the voting process. “But politics come into the Ballon d’Or, so I don’t like getting into politics,” Mourinho said, according to Vanguard News’s account of the press conference. He added that he was not attempting to reinvent how the award is decided with respect to Spain’s national team or Paris Saint-Germain, saying instead that identifying the world’s best player “is something else” entirely from team-based accolades.

Mourinho’s comments come as speculation continues to build over who will win this year’s award, with outlets including Yardbarker and Fanzword noting that three Real Madrid players, Kylian Mbappe, Vinicius Junior and Jude Bellingham, are widely expected to feature prominently on the shortlist. That expectation carries some irony, given that Real Madrid have gone without a major trophy over the past two seasons, a drought that has intensified scrutiny on Mourinho’s tenure at the club even as individual members of his squad remain considered among the world’s elite talents.

This year’s ceremony carries additional significance beyond the usual debate over winners and criteria. The 70th Ballon d’Or gala is scheduled for Monday, Oct. 26, and will mark the first time in the award’s history that the ceremony will be held in London rather than Paris, according to reporting from Yardbarker. France Football, the publication that created and has organized the Ballon d’Or since 1956, has awarded the prize annually to the player judged to have had the best individual season in men’s football, with a separate award for women’s football added in more recent years.

Mourinho’s remarks echo criticism he has voiced in previous years about the award’s criteria and voting process, though this year’s comments arrive with sharper specificity about which past players he believes exemplify the standard the award should uphold. His list of examples spanned multiple eras of the sport, from Diego Maradona and Zinedine Zidane to Ronaldo Nazario, Ronaldinho and both Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, players widely regarded among the most influential in the sport’s history regardless of how many Ballon d’Or trophies they ultimately won during their careers.

Messi holds the record with eight Ballon d’Or titles, while Ronaldo has won the award five times, and both players have previously been the subject of debate over how heavily team success, individual statistics and broader career legacy should factor into the voting. Mourinho’s comments Saturday suggest he believes the balance has tilted too far toward team achievements and away from recognizing players capable of leaving what he described as a lasting, unmistakable mark on the sport.

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