Benzema's Ballon d'Or win is the second-biggest ever after Ronaldo

Karan Tejwani

Updated: 23 May 2023 08:46 CDT
3 min read

Karim Benzema won the Ballon d’Or on Monday evening, capping off a brilliant year where he won the Champions League and La Liga with Real Madrid.

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Benzema was widely considered as the favourite and the win was confirmed on Monday, with Benzema overjoyed and appreciative and having the objective to carry on in this vein.

Sadio Mane, who moved from Liverpool to Bayern Munich over the summer, finished second, while Manchester City’s Kevin De Bruyne was third.

READ: Benzema: How Ronaldo leaving made me better

Now, the scale of Benzema’s win has been revealed and he nearly set a record with his success as the voting lists were revealed to the public.

Benzema dominant in Ballon d'Or voting

In all, Benzema accumulated 549 points in total, with second-place Mane earning 193 points, making this the second-biggest Ballon d’Or margin ever.

The 356-point margin is second only to Cristiano Ronaldo’s 2016 win, as the Portuguese star had a 429-point gap over Lionel Messi in that year’s rankings.

READ: Ballon d'Or proves the best players in the world are over 30

Benzema’s Real Madrid team-mates were lower down the list as Thibaut Courtois earned 82 points, Vinicius Jr. earned 61 points and Luka Modric earned 20 points, as they finished seventh, eighth and ninth respectively.

Légendaire pic.twitter.com/JqnupxJFiq
— Karim Benzema (@Benzema) October 20, 2022

Out of the 93 journalists that vote for the Ballon d’Or, 89 of them voted for Benzema as their first-choice candidate, showing how much of an impact he made this year.

The lowest rank Karim Benzema received in this year’s Ballon d’Or was third by the Slovenia’s journalist, who had De Bruyne and Robert Lewandowski ahead.

The four journalists that didn’t vote for Benzema in first place were from Senegal, Egypt, the Netherlands and Slovenia, who had Mane, Salah, Salah and De Bruyne in first respectively instead.

Last season, Benzema scored 44 goals across all competitions for Real Madrid – his best individual season – and was top scorer in both La Liga and the Champions League.