Who is the only goalkeeper to win Ballon d'Or award?

In Ballon d’Or history only one goalkeeper has won the award.

Since Ballon d’Or inception the award has been mostly won over by strikers or wingers and sometimes defenders and midfielders. Since 1956, 50 forwards (including wingers) have had the chance to be named the world’s best players, while 12 midfielders had the honour of winning the award.

But in the history of the award, only one goalkeeper has had the chance to lift the coveted award. Since then we have never seen any goalkeeper have an opportunity to win the prize.

At one point the prestigious award was dominated by only two players for a decade, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi who shared this prize throughout their playing career in Europe. But their supremacy finally came to an end when both moved out of Europe.

Now every talented individual be it a goalkeeper, defender, midfielder or forward will have a chance to lift this award once in their playing career.

But it is surprising to see that most of the winners have been those players who play as an attacker, sometimes it has been a midfielder or a defender but very rarely we have seen a goalkeeper win this honour.

Who is the only goalkeeper to win the Ballon d’Or award?

We have never seen a goalkeeper win a Ballon d’Or in the 21st century despite many top goalkeepers getting the nominees but most of them have finished second or third while it was always an attacker to claim the prize.

The likes of Oliver Kahn, Manuel Neuer and Gianluigi Buffon have all claimed top-three finishes in their career, while Thibaut Courtois and Alisson have been regular nominees. Despite some of them reaching the top three list of Ballon d’Or none of them came close to winning the award.

However, in the history of this award, we have witnessed only one goalkeeper claim this prize. Soviet legend Lev Yashin remains the only goalkeeper to win the award doing so in 1963 ahead of Gianna Rivera.

Yashin was not an ordinary goalkeeper during his playing career as he redefine the art of goalkeeping and making more entertaining of what we know today.

He led Dynamo Moscow to become Soviet champions for the fifth time in his career and was drafted into World XI by both World Soccer magazine and FIFA. He was also a standout player in the England vs Rest of the World exhibition at Wembley where he made plenty of saves which underlined his legacy as the best goalkeeper of that era.

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