How do we fix women's soccer awards?

Full Time: A show about women's soccer

The Athletic

News, Soccer, Sports News, Sports

4.8 • 756 Ratings

🗓️ 1 October 2025

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Last week, Aitana Bonmati won her third consecutive Ballon d’Or – essentially crowning her as the best player in the world for a third consecutive season. Understandably, that got the whole world talking about how we judge individual awards in soccer and what it means to be at the top of that list? The Full Time podcast included.

So, on this week's Full Time podcast, hosts Tamerra Griffin and Meg Linehan are joined by esteemed panel of guests, including Ballon d'Or voters Annie Peterson and Soph Downey, and The Guardian Top 100 Women's Footballers coordinator Rich Laverty, to try and figure out whether we can fix women's soccer awards voting.

What issues currently exist in the voting format? How are biases exposed in the voting and the awards themselves? Is is it even possible to be objective? And, what role does accessibility and national team performance in determining which players get their flowers?

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Referenced on the show

Ballon d’Or voting: Dembele’s dominance, how Bonmati won and other key takeaways

Aitana Bonmati’s third consecutive Ballon d’Or exposes voting flaws

How Ousmane Dembele and Aitana Bonmati won top 2025 Ballon d’Or awards at Paris ceremony

The Ballon d’Or and why football has become so obsessed with individual awards

What it’s like to vote for Ballon d’Or Feminin: The Athletic’s Steph Yang shares some insight

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HOSTS: Tamerra Griffin, Meg Linehan

GUESTS: Annie Peterson, Soph Downey, Rich Laverty

PRODUCER: Theo Lloyd-Hughes

VIDEO PRODUCER: Lia Griffin

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Emily Olsen

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Get in touch: ⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠

Follow on Instagram and TikTok: @tafulltime

Subscribe to the Full Time newsletter ⁠⁠here⁠⁠

Visit the Yahoo Women's Sports hub ⁠⁠here

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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