THE GOLDEN BALL AND ITS CHAMPIONS.

The Golden Ball, also known as European Footballer of the Year, is a football award established in 1956 by the French sports magazine France Football and awarded annually to the player who distinguished himself in the calendar year, playing in a team of any championship in the world.

The award was established in 1956 by the French magazine France Football, mainly on the impulse of the journalist and former footballer Gabriel Hanot, and secondly of his colleagues Jacques Ferran, Jacques Goddet and Jacques de Ryswick, with the aim of electing the best European player of the ‘previous year, through the votes of the specialized press: the first winner was the English Stanley Matthews of Blackpool.

Michel Platini in 1984 with the second of his three consecutive Ballon d’Ors, a record for the award in the original era of France Football.
From its creation until the 1994 edition, in fact, the regulation required that the sportsman must be of European nationality in order to aspire to the title: in this phase, this was derogated through the natives, see the cases of the Argentines Alfredo Di Stéfano and Omar Sívori, victorious respectively as a Spaniard for Real Madrid (1957 and 1959 editions) and as an Italian for Juventus (1961 edition).

In these decades, the Dutch Johan Cruyff of Ajax and Barcelona, ​​and Marco van Basten of Milan, and the French Michel Platini of Juventus, all with the record of 3 affirmations, emerged in the roll of honor; Platini has the primacy of consecutive successes in the three-year period 1983-1985, always limited to the organization of France Football. The victory of the Soviet Lev Jashin of Dynamo Moscow in the 1963 edition, the only one achieved by a goalkeeper, also remained in the annals.