Beth Mead criticises Ballon d'Or over 'tick box' women's award
England and Arsenal star Beth Mead has accused the Ballon d’Or of treating its women’s award as a ‘tick box’ and ‘token’, suggesting that FIFA’s approach to recognising the women’s game is ‘much better’ because of how included its female categories are in the overall ceremony.
The Ballon d’Or, organised by France Football, has long been recognised as the most prestigious individual award in the sport. It has been presented each year since the 1950s, but in recent years more prizes have been added, including the Ballon d’Or Feminin in 2018.
FIFA first created their equivalent award, original known as the FIFA World Player of the Year in 1991, and added a women’s accolade in 2001. The world governing body later rebranded its entire award ceremony in 2015 into The Best FIFA Football awards, featuring an equal number of multiple categories for men and women and a mixed Puskas Award for the top goal of the year.
Mead finished second in the 2022 Ballon d’Or Feminin and third in the Best FIFA Women’s Player vote after her outstanding year that peaked with Euro 2022 glory. Alexia Putellas won both.
But Mead, who also became the first female footballer to win BBC Sports Personality of the Year, has now revealed she ‘much preferred’ the experience at the FIFA awards to the Ballon d’Or.
“It was an honour to go to both,” she told the Boots, Balls and Bras podcast.
“I thought the Ballon d'Or was a token Ballon d’Or for women's football and that’s all it was. The setup wasn’t great. Alexia went up, they asked her a couple of questions and off she went.
"They did three or four awards between the female Ballon d'Or and the men's Ballon d'Or. In between that they did [Robert] Lewandowski top scorer, goalkeeper of the year, no female goalkeeper of the year, and a community award.
“Then at the end it was [Karim] Benzema who won. His full family was on stage taking pictures with him, all the journalists, and Alexia was sat on the front seat as if she wasn’t even there.
"[The Ballon d’Or] is such a prestigious award. Then it was a tick box to have women there but they weren’t doing it right. The FIFA Best, they did everything aligned. They did it all together so it was so much better."