Where are they now? Every player Roy Hodgson voted to win the Ballon d’Or

Roy Hodgson has never been one to go the mainstream route and made some rather interesting decisions during his four years as England manager between 2012 and 2016.

Some of those were reserved for his Ballon d’Or votes, with one year in particular standing out.

We’ve looked at every player Hodgson voted for in his top three for the Ballon d’Or.

Lionel Messi

Hodgson went with the status quo and voted for Messi as the winner in 2012. It would have been insane to assume most anybody could overlook him, given he scored a ridiculous 91 goals that year.

Messi has won the award four times since the then-England manager voted for him, playing for three different clubs when the accolades were scooped.

He won twice more while at Barcelona, in 2015 and 2019, before winning again as a Paris Saint-Germain player in 2019 and as an Inter Miami player in 2023, following World Cup triumph in 2022.

Cristiano Ronaldo

Ronaldo won the award in 2013, meaning Hodgson was two for two on picking the outright winner as the best player of the year.

In 2015, though, Messi won the award, and Hodgson plumped for his career rival, Ronaldo, instead, and slipped an out-of-form Eden Hazard in third place, because why not?

Ronaldo won the award in the next two years – 2016 and 2017 – and his since made three transfers.

Starting at Juventus, before a whistle-stop at Manchester United ended sour, with the Portuguese icon tearing up his contract and moving to Saudi Pro League side Al-Nassr, where he’s still banging in goals.

Radamel Falcao

Third place in 2012 for Hodgson was Falcao, who’d quickly become one of the deadliest strikers in world football during his spell with Atletico Madrid.

The Colombian was fifth in overall voting that year – the highest Ballon d’Or position of his career.

At 39 years old, Falcao is still playing, and after spells at huge clubs like Atletico, Chelsea and Manchester United, he recently played for Rayo Vallecano.

He is back in his native Colombia, playing for Millonarios FC, where he’s scored six goals in 20 games.

Eden Hazard

In 2015, Hazard came third on Hodgson’s list for the biggest honour a football player can win.

It was something of a surprise, given the Belgian had dropped off that year.

Hazard ended the 2015-16 season which followed with four goals in the Premier League and did not score a single goal in the first half of the campaign, in the lead up to the Ballon d’Or ceremony.

Hazard hit form again in the next three years at Chelsea, and was rewarded with a huge move to Real Madrid, in a package reportedly totalling £130million.

In 76 games for them, he managed just seven goals and 12 assists and has since retired.

QUIZ: Can you name every team Eden Hazard scored against for Chelsea?

Javier Mascherano

It’s the one you’ve been waiting for. Who did Hodgson vote for as the best men’s player on the planet in 2014?

Was it Ronaldo, was it Messi? Was it somebody who could conceivably have been seen as the world’s best that year?

No, it was Javier Mascherano.

Hodgson was one of only two managers, including the Belarus boss, to put the midfielder top of his list.

He was not even included in the team of the year, so who knows what the thought process was there.

At least his other picks, Philipp Lahm and Manuel Neuer, were selected in the best team that year, but that does mean that neither Ronaldo nor Messi got a look-in for Hodgson.

Mascherano has since become a manager himself and is currently in charge of the record Ballon d’Or winner Messi at Inter Miami.

If things go well for him, he may one day find himself having his own say in the annual award.

Perhaps he’ll be inspired by Hodgson to pick a random footballer that almost nobody else would have thought of.

Philipp Lahm

Hodgson followed his interesting route in 2014 pick by sticking Lahm at No.2.

He did not win, unsurprisingly, given a defender has not won the award since Fabio Cannavaro scooped it in 2006.

Included in the team of the year for 2014, Lahm had clearly played well, and the World Cup triumph likely contributed to his inclusion on Hodgson’s Ballon d’Or list.

The Bayern Munich icon won the Bundesliga three more times, in 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2016-17, before hanging up his boots in 2017.

Manuel Neuer

The best goalkeeper in the world in 2014, Hodgson used Neuer as the last of his picks, placing him in his third spot.

Given only one goalkeeper has ever won the award, it was something of a wasted vote.

Though Neuer did finish third overall in voting, so Hodgson could have helped to make history had a few more votes gone the German’s way.

Now 38, the Bayern man is still playing with the Bundesliga giants, and though injuries have become more of an issue than in his youth, Neuer has passed 750 career club games, including more than 550 for Bayern.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic

If we look past the fact that Hodgson didn’t vote for second-placed Messi, Ibrahimovic was not too bad of a pick – far from his most questionable.

He was second on Hodgson’s list for 2013, and finished fourth in voting for the year.

The Swede had just scored 30 league goals in a season for the first time in his career, with the 2012-13 season his first at PSG, and he ended the campaign with 35 goals and 17 assists in all club competitions, before starting the next season in red-hot form.

He would pass 30 league goals twice more in his career, in a 2015-16 Ligue 1 campaign in which he notched a remarkable 38 goals and 13 assists for PSG and in his second season with LA Galaxy.

Ibrahimovic retired in 2023 and taking an advisor role at former club AC Milan, where he ended his playing career after his second spell there.

Robin van Persie

Hodgson’s third vote in 2013 went to Van Persie, a striker who had just won his first and only Premier League title, after switching Arsenal for Manchester United.

In the triumphant 2012-13 campaign, the Dutchman scored 26 Premier League goals in a deadly duo with Wayne Rooney.

Van Persie moved to Fenerbahce a few years later, before his swansong with boyhood club Feyenoord.

He played more than 100 games for the Dutch outfit across both spells, and has recently been named their manager, after taking up multiple coaching jobs with the club, before a spell as Heerenveen manager directly preceded the big move.

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TRY A QUIZ: Can you name the top three of every Ballon d’Or award of the 2000s?