Every Football season, the Ballon d’Or becomes the ultimate symbol of footballing supremacy. Yet, beyond the dazzling lights of the ceremony, another distinction asks a far more consequential question: what does a footballer do with the privilege that greatness bestows upon them? This is where the Socrates Award enters the conversation as a moral intervention in a sporting culture often preoccupied with individual achievement.
Introduced in 2022 as part of the Ballon d’Or ceremony, the Socrates Award recognises footballers who use their influence, resources and public standing to advance humanitarian causes. Its purpose is to honour social commitment, solidarity, inclusion and the pursuit of a more equitable world. Created through the collaboration of the France football and Peace and Sport, the award represents an attempt to expand the definition of sporting greatness beyond the boundaries of the pitch.
Why Socrates? The footballer who made the ground political
The name is neither incidental nor merely decorative. The award commemorates Socrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira, universally known as Socrates, the Brazilian footballer, physician and social activist whose life demonstrated that sporting excellence need not exist in isolation from political consciousness or civic responsibility.
Born in Belem do Para, Brazil, in 1954, Socrates became one of the most distinctive midfielders of his generation. Tall, elegant and intellectually expressive, he played for clubs including Corinthians and represented Brazil at the 1982 and 1986 FIFA World Cups. He earned the nickname “Doctor” because he qualified as a physician while pursuing a professional football career.
But his historical significance extends well beyond his technique, vision and extraordinary ability to direct a football match. In the early 1980s, during Brazil’s military dictatorship, Sócrates became one of the most prominent figures associated with Democracia Corinthiana, or Corinthians Democracy. At Corinthians, players and staff participated in a more democratic system of decision-making, with collective votes influencing important aspects of the club’s functioning. The experiment challenged the rigid hierarchies that characterised much of Brazilian football and resonated with the country’s wider struggle for political democratisation.
Sócrates also used his public profile to advocate democratic freedoms and political change. His interventions mattered because he occupied a position of extraordinary visibility in a society where political expression could carry serious consequences. He died in December 2011, aged 57. Yet his legacy survives in a proposition that remains radical in contemporary professional sport: an athlete is not merely a body trained to perform, a celebrity manufactured for consumption or an asset measured by market value. An athlete is also a citizen.
That philosophy provides the intellectual foundation of the Socrates Award. As the award’s founders have explained, the distinction is intended to recognise the solidarity work of footballers and encourage them to contribute to more inclusive and peaceful societies.
The Ballon d’Or’s shadow- Football’s uncomfortable hierarchy of recognition
The Ballon d’Or, first awarded in 1956, occupies a unique position in football’s cultural imagination. Its history, competitive prestige and association with the sport’s most celebrated players make it an object of immense fascination. The debates surrounding its winners routinely become global spectacles, provoking arguments over statistics, trophies, individual influence and the relative merits of rival players.
There is nothing inherently wrong with celebrating exceptional sporting performance. Footballers who achieve extraordinary feats deserve recognition. The problem emerges when sporting excellence becomes the dominant language through which football evaluates human worth.
The Socrates Award operates according to a different moral logic. It does not ask who scored the most goals or who exercised the greatest influence over a championship. It asks who has used their position to make life better for others. But its existence alone is insufficient. Its winners must be discussed, their projects examined and their contributions evaluated with the same seriousness that football reserves for tactical innovations, transfer valuations and championship records.
2022: Sadio Mane- Bringing success home to Bambali
The inaugural Socrates Award was presented to Sadio Mane in 2022, recognising his sustained contributions to his home community in Senegal. At the time, Mane was already one of the most prominent African footballers in the world, having established himself at Liverpool before moving to Bayern Munich. His sporting achievements were considerable, but it was his commitment to the people and place from which he came that distinguished him in the eyes of the award’s jury.
Mane’s humanitarian work in Bambali, his home village in Senegal, included financial support for a hospital, a secondary school and other community projects. He also supported youth football, particularly opportunities for girls, and contributed to Senegal’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, the significance of his works is particularly powerful in a world where migration and economic opportunity often separate talented young people from the communities that raised them. Mane demonstrates that international success need not entail a severing of local responsibility.
2023: Vinicius Junior- Confronting racism and investing in education
The second Socrates Award went to Vinicius Junior in 2023. The Brazilian forward, then 23, had become one of the world’s most exciting attacking players at Real Madrid. His recognition, however, was rooted in two closely connected commitments: improving educational opportunities for children in Brazil and confronting racism in football.
Through the Instituto Vini Jr., he has supported educational initiatives that use technology and innovative teaching methods to improve learning opportunities for children, particularly those attending public schools. The institute’s work addresses educational inequality and the digital divide- problems that became particularly visible during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Vinícius’s other contribution has an equally important dimension- his resistance to racist abuse.
Racism in football is not simply a matter of offensive language directed at an individual player. It is an expression of wider social hierarchies that determine who is treated as belonging, who is subjected to humiliation and whose dignity is considered negotiable. When racist abuse occurs in stadiums, it challenges the claim that football is an inclusive space in which all participants are equal. The response to such abuse often places an unfair burden on the victim. Players are expected to endure insults, maintain composure and continue performing, as though professional excellence should somehow make discrimination tolerable.
Vinicius has refused to accept that expectation. His willingness to speak publicly about racism has helped sustain international attention on discrimination in the sport. The award’s recognition of Vinícius was therefore about more than charitable giving. It acknowledged the social significance of using one’s public platform to challenge an injustice that extends beyond an individual career.
2024: Jenni Hermoso- Dignity, equality and the struggle for accountability
The third recipient was Spanish footballer Jenni Hermoso, honoured at the 2024 Ballon d’Or ceremony. She became the first woman to receive the Socrates Award. Her recognition carried particular significance because her public role had become closely associated with the struggle for dignity, equality and accountability in women’s football.
Hermoso was a member of Spain’s victorious squad at the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup. The celebrations that followed Spain’s victory were overshadowed by the unwanted kiss imposed on her by then Spanish football federation president Luis Rubiales during the medal ceremony.
The incident provoked an international debate about consent, institutional power, gender relations and the treatment of women in professional sport. Hermoso’s subsequent public stance became part of a broader demand that women’s achievements should not be accompanied by an expectation that they tolerate violations of their personal boundaries.
The significance of her recognition should be understood carefully. The Socrates Award is not a legal verdict, nor should an award citation be confused with a comprehensive assessment of every social initiative associated with a recipient. Hermoso’s place in this history reflects the wider social significance of her stand for dignity and equality, alongside the humanitarian principles the award seeks to recognise.
2025: The Xana Foundation- When grief becomes a commitment to care
The 2025 Socrates Award was presented to the Xana Foundation, created by Spanish football coach Luis Enrique and his family. The foundation was established in memory of their daughter Xana, who died of osteosarcoma, a form of bone cancer at the age of nine. It supports seriously ill children and their families, including through medical, psychological and financial assistance.
The recognition introduced a significant dimension into the award’s history: the recipient was a foundation rather than an individual footballer receiving recognition solely in their own name. The foundation’s work emerges from a deeply personal experience of loss. Yet its significance extends beyond the private circumstances of one family. Serious childhood illness affects not only the child receiving treatment but also parents, siblings and caregivers. It can impose emotional distress, financial strain, disruption to family life and prolonged uncertainty.
Medical treatment is essential, but the experience of illness cannot be reduced to clinical procedures alone. Families may need psychological support, assistance with expenses and help navigating the practical demands of caring for a seriously ill child. The Xana Foundation’s mission responds to these wider needs.
2026: Bukayo Saka- Using privilege to protect a child’s future
The fifth recipient of the Socrates Award was England and Arsenal forward Bukayo Saka, announced at the 2026 Ballon d’Or ceremony. His recognition centred on philanthropic work supporting life-changing surgeries for children in Nigeria and other African countries through his partnership with the charity BigShoe.
Reports on the initiative describe Saka’s support for surgeries for 120 children in Kano, Nigeria, in 2022, followed by funding for another 100 children in Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania in 2023. The work focuses on children whose families might otherwise struggle to afford essential medical procedures.
Saka’s contribution is particularly notable because it crosses national boundaries. His footballing identity is closely associated with England and Arsenal, while his Nigerian heritage provides another point of connection in the story of his public life. The humanitarian initiative demonstrates how a footballer’s resources can support children whose circumstances differ greatly from those of the global sporting celebrity whose name brings the project attention.
Beyond charity- Towards a more humane football culture
The Socrates Award is still young. Its first five recipients have already shown that the social contribution of footballers can assume many forms. The Ballon d’Or will continue to command attention, as it should. But the stories recognised by the Socrates Award deserve a place at the centre of that celebration, not at its margins.
They remind us that the worth of a footballer cannot be exhausted by statistics, medals or market value. It can also be found in the opportunities created for a child, the dignity defended in the face of discrimination, the treatment made accessible to a family or the school and hospital that serve a community long after a player’s career has ended.
