Football’s biggest individual prize means something different depending on where you’re watching from. For African players and fans, a Ballon d’Or win isn’t just personal glory; it’s history. Only one African has ever lifted it: George Weah, back in 1995.

Every time an African name gets mentioned in the conversation, it revives a question that’s been open for three decades: when will the continent produce number two?

Before getting into who’s in the running this year, it’s worth understanding what the trophy actually is, where it came from, and why it carries the weight it does.

The award was born in 1956, the brainchild of Gabriel Hanot, then director of France Football magazine and the man also credited with dreaming up the European Cup, the tournament that became today’s Champions League.

Sir Stanley Matthews, the English winger, was the first man to win it.

For years, the Ballon d’Or was strictly a European affair, open only to players from the continent. That rule is the reason Diego Maradona, arguably the greatest player of his generation, never won it.

The same restriction meant Pele, the only man to win three World Cups, was locked out too. It wasn’t until the mid-1990s and beyond that the award opened up to any nationality, first for players at European clubs and eventually for footballers anywhere in the world.

Between 2010 and 2015, France Football merged the award with FIFA’s own World Player of the Year prize, creating the “FIFA Ballon d’Or.” The partnership ended in 2015, and the trophy reverted to its original branding.

Over almost 70 years, it’s changed hands, changed shape, and changed criteria, but it has never lost its status as the sport’s most coveted individual honor.

No two players have shaped the modern era of the award like Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. Messi holds the record with eight wins; Ronaldo has five.

Between them, they turned the Ballon d’Or race into a global spectacle and pushed the bar for what a “Ballon d’Or season” even looks like; numbers, trophies, and moments that used to be considered once-in-a-generation now show up as a baseline expectation.

The trophy starts life as two brass plates, brass being an alloy of copper and zinc that gives it that warm, gold-like shine before any plating happens. A goldsmith welds the two plates together with a blowtorch to form the ball shape.

From there, a chiseler packs the inside with a wax-like material and uses a hammer and chisel to shape and define the seams, giving it that unmistakable football texture.

Once the shape is set, the whole piece is plated in gold. The France Football logo is engraved onto the surface, and the winner’s name is added for that year. The finished ball then sits on a pedestal with a base made of pyrite, commonly known as fool’s gold.

The design in use today was created by François Mellerio of the Paris jewelry house Mellerio dits Meller, the same family firm that has crafted the trophy since 1956.

The current trophy stands 31 centimeters tall and measures 23 centimeters across. On its own, the golden ball weighs just over 7 kilograms, and with its pyrite base included, the full trophy comes in at around 12 kilograms.

Based purely on materials, gold, brass, and pyrite, the trophy is valued at roughly 3,000 euros. That figure has nothing to do with what it actually means to the player holding it.

For footballers, the Ballon d’Or’s real value isn’t in grams or euros; it’s in what it represents: recognition as the best player on the planet for that season.

No price tag captures that, and for African football, every year without a second Weah moment only adds to the anticipation of when that value finally gets claimed again.