Alexia Putellas and Karim Benzema are crowned 2022 Ballon d’Or winners

Alexia Putellas and Karim Benzema have been named the 2022 Ballon d’Or winners at the annual football awards ceremony in Paris.

Putellas retains her title as the world’s best women’s player after leading Barcelona to another Spanish title, scoring 18 goals in the process. Barça won all 30 of their league games and also won the Spanish Cup and Super Cup, but lost the Women’s Champions League final to Lyon and shed missed the Euros after suffering an ACL injury.

“I’m very happy to be back here,” Putellas said. “Winning last year pushed me to want to be even better. Without my teammates, this wouldn’t have been possible. I want to thank the coaches and technical staff who help me to improve every day.”

Benzema has won the men’s award for the first time after leading Real Madrid to the Spanish title and their 14th European Cup. The 34-year-old scored 27 goals in La Liga and was also the top scorer in the Champions League with 15. Ten of those goals came in the knockout stages, including hat-tricks against Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea.

After receiving a huge ovation from the crowd, Benzema said: “This prize in front of me makes me really proud. I never gave up, it was a childhood dream. There was a difficult period where I wasn’t in the France team, but I kept working hard. I kept in my head this joy of playing football; I’m really proud of my journey here.”

1 Karim Benzema (Real Madrid, France)2 Sadio Mané (Liverpool/Bayern, Senegal)3 Kevin De Bruyne (Manchester City, Belgium)4 Robert Lewandowski (Bayern/Barcelona, Poland)5 Mohamed Salah (Liverpool, Egypt) 6 Kylian Mbappé (PSG, France)7 Thibaut Courtois (Real Madrid, Belgium)8 Vinícius Júnior (Real Madrid, Brazil)9 Luka Modric (Real Madrid, Croatia)10 Erling Haaland (Dort