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Since the Ballon d’Or was first conceived there have been 66 English nominees.
Thirty-nine of them have received multiple nominations. Fifteen have finished in the top three. Four have been champions.
Unquestionably therefore England has played a prominent role in the Ballon d’Or story.
With so many of these players regarded as bona fide legends naturally a lot is already known about them, but there is always more to explore, fascinating territory that is not so well documented.
Here are seven passions, gifts and character traits of nominees you may not be familiar with.
Tony Woodcock – The poet
The former Nottingham Forest forward received his nomination in 1979, the same year he left the City Ground for FC Köln in Germany.
He departed England with a European Cup winners medal to his name, the Nottinghamshire-born striker playing a pivotal role in Forest’s 1-0 victory over Malmo.
That year too he won the PFA Young Player of the Year merit as well as scoring the winning goal in a League Cup final.
After three seasons in the Bundesliga, Woodcock signed for Arsenal, firing 56 goals, and it is the Gunners who indirectly inspired a surprising second career that has been carved out in recent years, decades after hanging up his boots.
One random afternoon, while journeying on a train, Woodcock spied a book of Leonard Cohen poems left on a nearby seat. He picked it up and was motivated to pen his own poetry, in due course accruing the courage to show his work to others.
One particular verse, entitled ‘The Highbury Tunnel 1913-2006’, that evokes the sights, sounds and emotions of Arsenal’s old home has been critically acclaimed.
Jimmy Greaves – A rallying call
In 1968, the prolific forward received the last of his six Ballon d’Or nominations. It was also the year when he finished as the English top-flight’s leading goalscorer for the sixth and final time.
He had achieved all that he could in the game. He had scored every conceivable type of goal many times over.
For Chelsea, he converted 124 goals in 157 outings. For Spurs, 220 goals in 321. For England, 44 in 57.
He had an itch. A need for a new challenge. Two years later, that desire manifested in the most left-field choice imaginable.
Teaming up with Tony Fall, a professional rally driver, Greaves embarked on a gruelling 16,000 mile rally race from Wembley to Mexico.
The race took 38 days to complete, encompassed 25 countries and wasn’t without incident, the two men colliding with a horse in South America.
There were icy roads to negotiate. Tracks made of red dust. On one occasion Greaves went without sleep for 55 hours, those hours spent at breakneck speed on rough terrain.
Of the 93 participants only 23 finished. To their huge credit, the Tottenham striker and Fall came sixth.
Frank Lampard – The genius
The five-time Ballon d’Or nominee – a runner-up in 2005 – always played with his brains, as much as his feet.
The manner in which the Chelsea legend navigated the Stamford Bridge pitch leant itself to shrewd in-game intelligence while few midfielders before or since have matched his impeccable timing when darting into the box.
No player in Chelsea’s history has scored more goals in the famous royal blue (255) and when it’s acknowledged that not once in 648 appearances did he play up front that says a great deal.
If a high footballing IQ lies at the root of this the player’s actual IQ also accounts for his erudite style of play.
In 2007, following a concussion suffered by his friend and team-mate John Terry – another Ballon d’Or nominee, in 2005, 2006 and 2009 – every Chelsea player was urged to undertake an IQ test.
Lampard’s score topped 150, which puts him in the top one per cent across the country.
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Phil Foden – The angler
To the bemusement of his Manchester City and England team-mates, Phil Foden spends every spare chance he gets sitting by a lake, angling for carp.
To Foden, his lifelong passion is the perfect antidote to the intense pressures of top-level football. He enjoys the quiet. The solitude. The opportunity to turn off his phone and recharge.
His fellow footballers, however, by Foden’s own admission, considers his preferred pastime ‘odd’.
“They don’t understand why you enjoy it,” he confided to City’s website in 2021, the same year he claimed his first of three Ballon d’Or nominations.
“Obviously, they need to go and try it. I think it’s the perfect hobby to rest your legs and have some down time”
This summer, omitted from England’s World Cup squad, the player eschewed the beaches of Dubai for a £35-a-night stay at a fishing lake in Lincolnshire.
Kevin Keegan – The resilience of youth
On July 20 the footballing world mourned the loss of Kevin Keegan and the tributes that were subsequently shared, across social media and in households across the UK, revealed the high regard in which the legendary figure was held.
People spoke of his exceptional feats as a player, for Liverpool and Hamburg, then latterly Southampton and Newcastle. The European Cup successes. His back-to-back Ballon d’Or triumphs in 1978 and 1979.
They reminisced too about his managerial accomplishments. His transforming of Newcastle and the exciting, attacking football he always advocated.
Truly, he was a sporting superstar.
It may surprise to learn therefore that his initial steps into the game were faltering ones.
A six-week trial at Coventry as a schoolboy came to nothing. The youngster was also rejected by Doncaster Rivers, his local club, who informed his father than Kevin would be better suited as a jockey due to his small stature.
Keegan responded to each set-back with admirable fortitude, relentlessly training and changing his diet so as to build muscle mass.
While others may have accepted their fate and fallen at the first, he reacted like the champion he was.
Francis Lee and Michael Owen – The Trainers
Several decades separate the distinguished careers of Lee and Owen, while their club loyalties lay on opposing sides of Manchester.
A love of horses, however, unites this otherwise disparate pair of England legends.
In 1984, Lee – who accrued his wealth not from football but via a wastepaper manufacturing company he established post-retirement – began training racehorses at a Stud Farm in Cheshire.
All told, he saddled 181 winners.
Owen meanwhile owns a state-of-the-art stables that covers 170 acres, also in Cheshire. The former striker can usually be found there, tending to the 130 horses alongside his wife, Louise.
His biggest success came in 2014 when Brown Panther, a thoroughbred under his charge, won the Irish St. Leger.
Between them Francis Lee and Michael Owen won 116 England caps and were nominated eight times by Ballon d’Or, with Owen awarded the Golden Ball in 2001.
Joe Cole – Never driven to distraction
A cheeky one to end on, though it is not remotely flippant to state that the former Liverpool and Chelsea midfielder was a driven individual, whose only focus across a successful 20-year career was on the next game.
To suggest that this tunnel-vision left him blind to a Ballon d’Or nomination, however, is pushing it slightly.
In 2021, Cole was asked to comment on Mason Mount’s nomination, and was then prompted to reminisce on his own recognition in 2006.
This was news to the popular pundit who, for 15 years, had been entirely unaware.
“To be honest, I didn’t even know I was nominated. I’ll tell my kids – that will be a good one”
Highlighting the remarkable strength of Chelsea’s midfield that year, Michael Ballack, Claude Makalele, Michael Essien and Frank Lampard were also in contention.
