Why Aitana Bonmati is the world’s most interesting footballer

For the fourth year in a row, the women’s Ballon d’Or has been won by a Barcelona and Spain midfielder.

In 2021 and 2022 it was awarded to Alexia Putellas; in 2023 and 2024 it has been awarded to Aitana Bonmati. It would be easy — and to a certain extent, perfectly reasonable — to consider this a quartet of successes for the same type of footballer, the same footballing approach.

But Bonmati is a very different footballer to Putellas. She is more subtle, more scheming, more interesting. In fact, given the relative lack of big personalities in the running for the men’s award, and the sense that this is something of a fallow period of world-class players now Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are playing outside the elite leagues, Bonmati might be the world’s most intriguing footballer.

Bonmati’s rise into the world’s most revered footballer represents the evolution of the women’s game in a tactical sense; it has moved away from individualism and towards collectivism. Until relatively recently, the standout attackers exerted undue dominance over matches; they were physically and technically superior to team-mates and opponents, and could run riot single-handedly.