The public has made its point, and it has made it loudly: Cristiano Ronaldo’s 2007-08 season is running away with the Super Ballon D’or vote. At 75%, this is not a tight contest, not a clever debate, and not even a respectable chase. It is a statement. Ronaldo’s Manchester United campaign has become the standard by which everyone else is being measured.
There is a reason that season still carries so much weight. Ronaldo scored 42 goals in all competitions for Manchester United as the club won the Premier League title and the UEFA Champions League. That is the sort of output that does not just win honours; it burns itself into football memory. In a public vote tied to the 70th anniversary of the Ballon d’Or, that kind of season was always going to have a strong case. The surprise is not that Ronaldo leads. The surprise is the size of the gap.
Messi is second, but the margin is brutal
Lionel Messi’s 2012 Ballon d’Or-winning season is the runner-up entry on 9%, which tells you everything about how one-sided this race has become. Ronaldo’s 2017 season is in third on 6%, which only reinforces the basic truth of the poll: when people are asked to choose the greatest Ballon d’Or-winning season of all time, they are gravitating toward the same two names again and again, but overwhelmingly toward one season in particular.
The numbers do the talking. Ronaldo is on 75%, Messi is on 9%, and Ronaldo’s 2017 season sits on 6%. That is a landslide by any normal standard, and a particularly emphatic one in a debate that has spent years living off fine margins and endless arguments. Public opinion has not just leaned one way; it has practically flattened the field.
And no, this does not rewrite the official Ballon d’Or record. It cannot. Messi still holds that record with eight awards, while Ronaldo has five. This is a special B.O.A.T. campaign, not another official Ballon d’Or. The distinction matters. But it does not make the verdict any less striking. If anything, it sharpens it. Fans have been asked to isolate the greatest individual season within the award’s history, and they have come back with a response that is brutally clear.
The poll is scheduled to close on 27 October 2026, but the shape of the contest already tells its own story. Ronaldo’s 2007-08 season is not merely leading. It is dominating. In a debate built around greatness, that is the kind of lead that says the argument may already be over.
