Shocking Mo Salah oversights laid bare as Egyptian journalist shares Ballon d’Or voting details | OneFootball

Another year has gone by with the Ballon d’Or eluding Mo Salah, who’ll be 34 by the time the award is next handed out.

The Liverpool forward was the highest-paid Premier League player in the voting for the 2025 men’s prize, but he still had to settle for fourth behind Vitina, Lamine Yamal and overall winner Ousmane Dembele (BBC Sport).

The Egyptian’s latest snub reinforced Jamie Carragher’s belief that the Reds icon would’ve won it this year had they rather than Paris Saint-Germain claimed Champions League glory, with the winger’s 2024/25 haul of 34 goals and 23 assists still not enough to even get him into the top three.

Salah snubbed completely by 11 journalists in Ballon d’Or voting

Further details regarding how the adjudicating journalists for the Ballon d’Or voted have now come to light courtesy of Egyptian reporter Ismael Mahmoud (via X), and LFC fans are sure to be appalled at some of the perceptions of Salah.

Only four of the journalists involved in the voting had Liverpool’s number 11 in first place (Egypt, Bahrain, Jordan, and South Africa).

Even more shockingly, no fewer than 11 didn’t even include him in their top ten, with those from Qatar, Romania, Mexico, Equatorial Guinea, Georgia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Albania, Panama, Switzerland, and Uganda completely snubbing the 33-year-old despite his incredible season.

(Photo by George Wood/Getty Images)

Salah’s glorious career deserves a Ballon d’Or

Despite Egypt head coach Hossam Hassan rightly claiming that Salah ‘deserves’ to win the Ballon d’Or for his ‘years of brilliance, excellence and creativity in the strongest league in the world’, it felt that the 2025 award would always be Dembele’s for his starring role as PSG romped to Champions League glory.

In the one year that the Liverpool star did win Europe’s biggest prize (2019), he placed fifth for the sport’s most coveted individual honour, with Virgil van Dijk and Sadio Mane second and fourth respectively as Lionel Messi came out on top (GOAL).

There’ll naturally be a bias towards the major players in winners of competitions such as the World Cup, European Championship or Champions League, and it looks increasingly as though the Reds would have to win the latter at a minimum for their number 11 to be officially recognised as the planet’s best player.

While we’re obviously predisposed towards Salah, it’s hard to dispute that his incredible goalscoring consistency for a club who’ve won several major trophies over the past few years would make him a worthy recipient of the Ballon d’Or.

It’d be a real shame if his career were to finish without that accolade to his name, but we certainly won’t be complaining if he gets his hands on the Premier League and/or Champions League trophies again in 2026!