Former Olympique de Marseille winger and England international Chris Waddle sat down with Get French Football News to discuss the Ballon d’Or and his reservations about the hotly contested award.

Who do you think deserves to win the Ballon d’Or? 

I’m obviously in Harry Kane’s camp. To be perfectly honest, I’m not a great lover of the Ballon d’Or. I think it should be on a player and how they’ve done, not on whether they’ve won trophies – [as] that’s a team game. 

If you’re looking at an individual. I don’t think anyone has done better than Harry Kane over the course of the year. He should win it, but I think Lamine Yamal will win it, because Spain won the World Cup and Barcelona won their league. 

I’ve never been a great lover of it. If you want to do an individual award, then look at the stats. It’s always about a player who scores goals or makes goals. It’s never about the goalkeeper. Rodri won it the year before last, which was nice to see. You never see a centre-half win it; you never see a fullback win it. 

If you go down the best player of the year, Harry Kane should win it with his goal records and assists. 

I think in the next few years we’ll see players like Désiré Doué win it. We saw Ousmane Dembélé win it last year when Paris Saint-Germain won their first Champions League. He did ok, but if Paris hadn’t won the Champions League, he wouldn’t have been in the top ten. 

It’s unfair because you’re not judging the player, you’re judging the team. So Kane should win it, but I think Lamal will just pip him. 

Did players ever talk about it when you played? 

No, no. Jean-Pierre Papin won it while I was at Marseille. I was eighth or ninth, something like that. But it wasn’t something players talked about or discussed. 

Maybe, privately they did. But I can’t remember ever having conversations about it in the changing room. 

In England, you win footballer of the year because of what you’ve done as an individual – not the team. I think the Ballon d’Or is about the team. 

When Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo kept winning it every other year – rightly so, I suppose, because they were the most exciting players and doing the business – it did help them the year they won it if their team won something major. 

You could play for a team in the Europa League, and you might have an unbelievable season, but you’ve got no chance of winning the Ballon d’Or. It’s a little bit for the elite and for people who have won the Champions League. 

You could basically be ranked 10th or 12th in the order, but if you win the Champions League, you’ll go to first. 

Good luck with them. I’m not digging out any player because it’s not their say, but people have to have a look at the format. 

Why has the Ballon d’Or become so political, with players now campaigning for it?

I haven’t a clue. For me, 80-90% of footballers just play football, and if they win the Ballon d’Or, they’d go, ‘What? Why? What do you mean?’ I think maybe in the last couple of years players have stopped being that way. 

I can never remember players talking about the Ballon d’Or. 

Yes, it’s an achievement. I’m not saying it’s not. It’s a great achievement, but it’s on your team. It’s not about you. 

Messi and Ronaldo were brilliant players, both unbelievable footballers, but without the team around them giving them the ball, creating the chances, making the runs off the ball, they wouldn’t have won it. 

It’s always about players who put the ball in the net or win a trophy.