How did a 41-year-old winger win the first Ballon d'Or in 1956?

The first Ballon d'Or went to Stanley Matthews, an English outside right who was 41 years old. The 1956 award was for the best football player in Europe, as judged by a panel of sports journalists from UEFA member countries. Matthews received it on 18 December 1956, and he remains the oldest player ever to win it: 41 years and 321 days.

Matthews was nicknamed "The Wizard of Dribble" and "The Magician". He had spent 14 years at Blackpool, where he lost the FA Cup finals of 1948 and 1951 before winning the cup in 1953 with a formidable personal performance, the one still called the "Matthews final". He kept fit enough to play at the top level until he was 50, and in 1965 he became the only footballer ever knighted while still an active professional.

His discipline is part of the legend too. He was never booked or sent off in his entire career, and his teammate Jimmy Armfield noted that he never retaliated when opponents tried to take him out of the game with very physical challenges.

The award grew out of Gabriel Hanot's European projects. He had already relaunched the idea of a European club cup with his colleague Jacques Ferran, and that competition took shape in 1955. A year later, through his magazine France Football, he created the Ballon d'Or as a yearly prize for the greatest male European footballer, voted by journalists from across Europe.