What is the Golden Ball award in the World Cup?

At every World Cup, journalists from around the world covering the tournament vote for the player they believe has been the best across the whole competition. The winner is given the Golden Ball, a small trophy on a base. Unlike a player-of-the-match award, this is not about a single performance. It is about who has been the most influential and consistent presence across an entire tournament. It is one of the most prestigious individual honours a footballer can win.

The Golden Ball and the Golden Boot are easy to confuse, so it helps to be clear. The Golden Boot is given to the player who scores the most goals at the tournament. The Golden Ball is given to the player judged the most influential overall — including goals, but also creativity, leadership, defensive work, and effect on the team's results. The two awards are sometimes won by the same player, but very often they are not. A striker can win the Golden Boot without being chosen as the tournament's best player.

Recent winners give a sense of what the award rewards. Lionel Messi of Argentina won the Golden Ball in 2014 — even though Argentina lost the final to Germany — and won it again in 2022 as the captain of the team that finally lifted the trophy. That makes Messi the only player to have won the Golden Ball twice. Earlier winners include Diego Maradona in 1986, Zinedine Zidane in 2006, and other players who shaped their tournaments through more than just goalscoring.

Before each World Cup final, FIFA publishes a shortlist of candidates picked by its Technical Study Group. Accredited media members at the tournament then vote, and the votes are tallied to produce the winner. The voting is announced at the tournament itself, alongside the second-place Silver Ball and the third-place Bronze Ball. The Golden Ball is the headline award, and the player chosen often becomes one of the lasting faces of that World Cup in football memory.

This article was written using information from Wikipedia.