Declan Rice's Rise: Future Ballon d'Or Contender?

Declan Rice has just helped drag the Premier League title back to north London for the first time in 22 years. He has become the heartbeat of Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal, a £105 million gamble that now looks like the final, gleaming piece in a long, painstaking rebuild.

So the question has inevitably followed: is this the trajectory of a future Ballon d’Or winner?

Rice’s rise has been relentless since Arsenal prised him away from West Ham in 2023 for a then British record fee. Almost ever-present, he has anchored a side that has grown in stature around him, his presence in midfield turning promise into something far more tangible. The title win is not just a line on his CV; it is the kind of landmark achievement that pushes a player into the global conversation.

England are watching all of this with interest – and no small amount of hope. Sixty years without a major trophy has hardened expectations and frayed patience. Rice now heads into a summer on North American soil as one of the pillars of the Three Lions’ latest assault on the game’s biggest prize. If he can add a world crown to his domestic success, the Ballon d’Or narrative will only gather pace, especially for a player widely tipped as a future England captain.

Yet not everyone is ready to anoint him as a Golden Ball contender.

Robbie Fowler, a former England striker and Liverpool icon, cut through the hype when asked whether Rice is ready to be spoken about in those terms. His benchmark was brutal and familiar: Steven Gerrard.

“I like Declan Rice,” Fowler said, speaking exclusively to GOAL courtesy of BetMGM, before drawing the comparison that always seems to hover over England’s midfielders. Gerrard, who finished third in the 2005 Ballon d’Or, remains the standard. In Fowler’s eyes, Rice is not there. Not yet.

He acknowledged Rice’s evolution since arriving at Arsenal, calling him a more complete player, a midfielder who has clearly “gone up a notch.” But Fowler’s verdict on the Ballon d’Or debate was firm. Gerrard, for all his dominance at Liverpool and his defining Champions League nights, never actually won the award. Rice, Fowler argued, still has another level to reach even to stand in that company, let alone surpass it.

That view is backed, for now, by the numbers. In the 2025 Ballon d’Or vote, Rice came in 27th. Respectable, but hardly the mark of a man on the brink of being crowned the best player on the planet. At that point, he had not yet lifted major silverware with Arsenal, his performances judged without the shine of a league title.

That has changed. Rice now has a domestic crown to his name and came agonisingly close to completing a historic double with Arsenal. The fine margins of elite football denied him that extra piece of silver, but not the sense that he has moved into a different bracket of influence.

What he does next will define whether this is a peak or a stepping stone.

The England midfielder remains grounded in his own assessment. The Kingston upon Thames native would be the first to admit he is not yet at Gerrard’s level. That self-awareness sits alongside something more important: intent. Rice has never been one to shrink from a challenge, whether it was leaving his boyhood club, shouldering a record fee, or dictating games under the fiercest scrutiny.

Now the stage widens. Club glory secured, at least in part, his attention turns to the international arena and the chance to carry his club form into an England shirt at a major tournament. Lift a global trophy with the Three Lions, and the Ballon d’Or conversation stops being theoretical. It becomes a live debate.

For the moment, Rice stands in that intriguing space between admiration and greatness, between being a “fantastic player,” as Fowler put it, and a genuine contender for the game’s most coveted individual honour. The ladder to Gerrard’s echelon is still in front of him.

The real test is whether he climbs it quickly enough to hear his name read out on football’s biggest individual stage.