Ballon d'Or Power Rankings: Cole Palmer on the rise but still behind Mohamed Salah, Lamine Yamal and more

The 2024-25 men's football season reached its conclusion on Sunday and so it is time to set notifications ablaze one last time as we rank the runners and riders for the Ballon d'Or.

What has changed since our last look at the best individual performers in soccer, in the hazy afterglow of Paris Saint-Germain's triumph at the Champions League final? Not a lot, really, so if you were livid about the shape of our last top six, well, you might want to look away now. There has, of course been one event that rippled with hype and bluster, Chelsea earning the rights to name themselves champions of the world for the next four years after beating PSG at MetLife Stadium in Club World Cup final. Add in a few skirmishes on the international stage, most notably Portugal's win in the Nations League, and we have a few new data points to consider at least.

Will the Club World Cup merit serious consideration for Ballon d'Or voters? It is simply too early to say. Perhaps if Ousmane Dembele had played an outsized role in PSG's triumph, it could have put him over the top, but there is a credible case to be made that at least three of Europe's top half dozen teams from last season -- Barcelona, Liverpool and Arsenal -- were nowhere to be seen in this competition.

In this column's view, FIFA's jamboree is still a significantly lesser prize than the Champions League. Equally, it's not nothing. Its finest performers merit (and, spoiler alert, will receive) a little bump in the rankings. That's not all that has changed. PSG might not have won stateside, but their best performances were more than enough to reinforce the notion that there is nothing flash in the pan about Luis Enrique's side. Plus, you lot all got pretty heated about the absence of a few of their best players. The CBS Sports Ballon d'Or power rankings might be made up by a committee of one, but never let it be said they are not open to outside input and/or easily rattled in the comments section.

Right, let's get into these with current odds listed:

What was true six weeks ago has not changed and really nothing that happened at the Club World Cup could have changed it. A 34-goal, 23-assist season is supposed to be the territory of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo in their prime. What Mohamed Salah delivered in the toughest domestic league was remarkable, taking an unfancied Liverpool team to a Premier League title won at a canter. The fact that his best work was done before the spring changes nothing.

Another with bafflingly long odds considering what they actually achieved in 2024-25, where Raphinha emerged from the fringes of the Barcelona side to deliver a historic individual season in the Champions League as well as the sustained excellence required to carry them to La Liga glory.

Could Ousmane Dembele have leapfrogged to the top of our rankings off the back of what he did at the Club World Cup? It would have to have been something special, given that the competition is yet to prove itself to belong at the pinnacle of football, but you could have imagined some outstanding performances against the tough field PSG had to get through might have swung the issue.

How Chelsea beat Paris Saint-Germain at their own game to claim Club World Cup glory

Ultimately, injuries served to limit Dembele's opportunities, the 28-year-old playing only three games before the final defeat. Sparkling cameos against Bayern Munich and Real Madrid, the latter an extended one, were a reminder of his class, but PSG's performances as a whole also spoke to what had been apparent during their Champions League run. Dembele might be the best player in the best team, but what makes Les Parisiens so special is the sum of the parts, not any one individual.

Deep down, I think this might be a smidge too high for Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, who did win two of Europe's top five league titles and a Champions League. The raw output wasn't quite at the level of the forwards above and below him, but the heart wants what it wants. And no one throughout this season was as exhilarating, creative and ludicrously exciting as the man they call Kvaradona.

If you happened to miss last season, here's all you need to know about Pedri. He was the same brilliant ball progressor you've always known, it's just that version 2.0 of the Spaniard added almighty ball-winning chops, establishing himself as probably the most complete midfielder in the sport right now.

The one call that brought the most pelters last month was probably ranking Lamine Yamal outside the top five, which reflects the two schools of Ballon d'Or opinion as well as anything. For some, the winner should be the man who seized the stage in the biggest games of the season, delivering the moments of the season. In that sense, Yamal, the star of the Champions League semifinals even in defeat and now with a new contract, had as good a season as anyone not named Dembele.

That assessment of the Ballon d'Or is entirely valid, but generally this column will cleave towards the aggregate view, and there Yamal was just not quite up to the levels of Salah, Raphinha and Dembele. Not yet, at least. It seems a matter of when, not if, with him.

If the guy below him in these rankings is the engine that makes PSG function at the highest level, Achraf Hakimi is the tires that cover yard after yard without any sign of wear and tear. Hakimi was arguably his side's best player at the Club World Cup, particularly exceptional in the wins over Bayern Munich and Real Madrid, even without scoring.

Another who excelled at the Club World Cup, but what really sent Vitinha skyrocketing from 11th (on which you'll have to trust me) to eighth was his excellence against Spain in the Nations League final. It is quite something to look like the best midfielder on the park when the other guys are Pedri and Martin Zubimendi, but such excellence has been the norm for the Portugal international.

One whose absence brought all sorts of opprobrium to my Instagram notifications, Gianluigi Donnarumma probably did deserve a top 10 spot over the likes of Harry Kane and perhaps even Virgil van Dijk. First, an explanation for his initial absence. In general, goalkeepers at the truly elite level don't have that much to do; it can even be hard to say whether they've had an objectively superior season to the active shot stopper for a side in the bottom half of the table.

Then again it can't be denied that Donnarumma was exceptional in some of the biggest matches of PSG's season, delivering in the moments when the best prove their worth. That carried on for most of the Club World Cup too, five saves helping to take the European champions past Bayern Munich in the quarterfinals.

First, a word on the trio that dropped out. There's not much that happened to Virgil van Dijk and Harry Kane, others simply leapfrogged them, but Kylian Mbappe's case might be the most interesting. He scored an awful lot of goals last season, 44 by the end of year one at Real Madrid, but the Club World Cup did not exactly quell the sense that his new team are not that much better off for having him. Stomach flu hampered his ability to be his best, but his display against PSG invited some unflattering questions.

You couldn't say that about Cole Palmer, outstanding in Chelsea's 3-0 triumph at MetLife Stadium. Had the England international kept up his domestic form through the second half of this season, he would have been on this list before the Club World Cup, but that competition offered a healthy reminder of his burgeoning greatness.