Why Melchie Dumornay should lead the way in a Ballon d’Or race that challenges the status quo

There is something about the glitz of a Champions League final that awakens the Ballon d’Or imagination.

On paper, the European competition is no more related to the French award for the player voted best in the world than any of the other continental tournaments, except for their physical proximity to each other. And yet a successful UEFA Champions League campaign — individually or as a team — has proven more effective to securing a Ballon d’Or than every other competition apart from the World Cup.

Look no further than the last five awards, split between three-time reigning Ballon d’Or winner Aitana Bonmati and two-time winner Alexia Putellas. Both were mainstays on an FC Barcelona team that won four of the last six Champions League finals and featured in all six. (They also lifted the World Cup with Spain in 2023 and made it to the European Championship in 2025.)

What is the proper balance between a candidate’s accomplishments for club and country to earn a Ballon d’Or nomination? And how prestigious does each of those teams need to be?

One of the more prominent shifts in the women’s game globally has been the emergence of star players from countries outside North America and Europe. Increasingly, they represent those countries at the international level as well, rather than for the country that likely colonized their homeland.

By some measures, this has presented a conundrum when assessing a player’s talent for a Ballon d’Or nod. Stark differences in development and investment from national teams and the federations that govern them lead to contrasts in the quality of competition from one region to the next.

The weight of those factors has historically tilted toward Europe. It’s time for that to change, and there may be no better player for this departure than Melchie Dumornay of OL Lyonnes in France.

After finishing 18th in the Ballon d’Or rankings last year, the Haitian midfielder is well deserving of a top-three finish.

It could have been higher had Lyon won the Champions League this year. Instead, the eight-time champions were outplayed by a clinical and composed Barcelona in Saturday’s final by a decisive four goals to nil, but that should not erase Dumornay’s impact on Lyon and across European women’s football. She is among the single most important players to any team’s success, a reality that was on display during Lyon’s semifinal fixtures against 2025 European champions Arsenal.

Dumornay was on the bench due to injury in the first leg and Arsenal won 2-1. She returned for the second leg and Lyon won 3-1, which included a sublime assist to German winger Jule Brand to seal their victory. Altogether, Dumornay recorded five goals and an assist in Lyon’s Champions League campaign, and another six goals and seven assists in the French Première Ligue. She has been voted league MVP, and in the league final on Friday, added a hat trick to her tally against Paris FC, whom Lyon beat 5-0. This was on top of their 4-1 French Cup victory over Paris Saint-Germain in May, for which Dumornay also earned best player honors.

She has been a crucial presence on the Haitian women’s national team as they seek World Cup qualification for the second time. Ranked 50th in the world by FIFA and coached by Swedish veteran manager Pia Sundhage, Haiti currently tops their group alongside Mexico, Jamaica, Costa Rica, Panama and El Salvador.

C’EST QUOI CETTE FRAPPE EXTRAORDINAIRE ??? 🤯

Melchie Dumornay et les Lyonnes de l’OL font sombrer le Paris FC, la suite de cette finale folle sur CANAL 📺#ArkemaPL | #OLPFC pic.twitter.com/raiVJDeXVr

— CANAL+ Foot (@CanalplusFoot) May 29, 2026

Dumornay, of course, is not the only player who deserves a look at being the first non-American or European player to win the Ballon d’Or. Japanese midfielder Yui Hasegawa of Manchester City did not crack in to the top 30 list last year. The 29-year-old’s prospects this time around should be much brighter now, bolstered by a continental championship with Japan at the AFC Asian Cup in March, and by a title run with Manchester City that saw them lift a WSL trophy for the first time in a decade. Hasegawa was central to both as arguably the most complete defensive midfielder in the women’s game right now. Historically, Asian women’s football has not been regarded with the same respect as its European counterparts, but Japan, with its World Cup pedigree, has set out to change that narrative.

As the Mexican professional league Liga MX Femenil continues to grow in domestic and international prominence, they will soon be demanding Ballon d’Or attention too. Club América captain and Mexican national team forward Scarlett Camberos has just this week been involved in two champions runs for her club: the Clausura on May 17 and their first Concacaf W Champions Cup title six days later. By winning Concacaf, América qualifies for the inaugural FIFA Club World Cup scheduled to begin in January 2028. (Barcelona has also qualified by winning the Champions League.) Should Mexico punch their ticket to the 2027 World Cup, players like Camberos will deserve the international recognition of a Ballon d’Or nomination, too.

Lyon forward Ada Hegerberg was the inaugural Ballon d’Or recipient in 2018, the same year the French side won its third Champions League title. The following year it went to U.S. forward Megan Rapinoe. The only non-European Ballon d’Or winner to date, Rapinoe’s shock of purple hair, statuesque goal celebrations and infamous refusal of a Trump White House visit defined the arc of the U.S. women’s national team’s triumphant run at the 2019 World Cup, for which she won the Golden Boot.

But not all European nations are treated equally. Barcelona striker Ewa Pajor was a poetic protagonist on the Catalan side, lifting her first Champions League trophy after five failed attempts. The Polish forward finally found glory last weekend, her pair of goals providing first relief, and then security to Barcelona’s resolve against Lyon. Even after adding to that the 16 goals she scored across 22 games for Barcelona in the Spanish Liga F, and subtracting whatever Ballon d’Or boost Pajor might lose should Poland fail to qualify for the 2027 World Cup, Pajor is also worthy of a top-five finish.

It has been all Spain and Barcelona — specifically, Putellas and Bonmatí, the only two Ballon d’Or winners since 2021. Putellas won back-t0-back awards in 2021 and 2022, years in which Barcelona won their first Champions League and reached the finals of the other, respectively. Bonmatí topped that up with three consecutive Ballon d’Or honors, beginning with the year Spain won its first World Cup in 2023.

Spain were finalists at the Euros last summer. Despite missing most of the group stage matches as she recovered from viral meningitis, Bonmatí still made crucial contributions to her team’s journey through the knockout stages, recording an assist in the quarterfinals against Switzerland and scoring the game-winning goal in the semifinals against Germany. Spain fell to England on penalties in the Euros final, three goals to one. Bonmatí, Mariona Caldentey — last year’s Ballon d’Or runner-up — and Salma Paralluelo all missed their shots.

If setbacks like those were not enough to thwart Bonmatí or Caldentey’s chances at a Ballon d’Or, neither should the fact that Dumornay did not win the Champions League, or that Hasegawa did not compete in it or that Pajor may not qualify for the World Cup with Poland. As with many things within the women’s game, nuance is necessary to fully appreciate what these special players offer.