Only one Liverpool player – Michael Owen in 2001 – has ever won the liquid gold-dipped trophy, awarded to the man voted the world’s best player each year, and not since Fernando Torres’ third-placed finish in 2008 has a member of the Reds squad appeared on the podium.
The first winner with a strong Anfield connection came in the form of Kevin Keegan. Although the Englishman was playing for Hamburg when crowned in both 1978 and 1979, he owed much of his development to Liverpool and to Bill Shankly in particular, who had signed him from Scunthorpe United as an apprentice in 1971 and turned him into one of the most feared forwards on the continent.