Ballon d’Or: 7 footballers who came second best and never won the trophy

Ballon d’Or trophy, awarded since 1956, has been the cult trophy recognized as the most coveted one to win in international football. Many legends have won it, many have missed the trophy by a whisker.

Ballon d’Or is awarded by voting through a 5-tier structure by journalists the world over in their order of preferences. Every year a list of nominees are published by France Football and it is from this shortlist that the journalists pick their 5 player preferences.

Here in this article, we look at the 7 international footballers who came second best in the run to win the Ballon d’Or and could never win the award since then. Since there were endless footballers who came second best, we have restricted the selection to the players who came second best in the last 2 decades (1998-2018).

So, let us see who were the unlucky footballers who came second best in the Ballon d'Or race.

#7 Davor Šuker - 1998

Davor Suker is undoubtedly the best Croatian footballer in the history of Croatian sport. Perhaps Luka Modric can pose a challenge to that claim now, but Suker remains as the most influential and popular footballer Croatia has ever produced. He is currently the president of Croatian football federation and still remains as Croatia's all time top scorer in International football, with 45 goals to his name.

Davor Suker came close to winning the Ballon d’Or in 1998 when he eventually lost out to the World Cup winner Zinedine Zidane. The author had previously written an article about the striking coincidences between Ballon d’Or 2018 and 1998, when comparing the two from the point of view of Croatian football.

After 1998, Davor Suker could not get into the top 3 of Ballon d’Or in any other year and remained as one of the many footballers who could not get the footballing crown.