Declan Rice: Arsenal's Premier League Champion and Ballon d'Or Hopeful

Declan Rice has just powered Arsenal to a long-awaited Premier League title and driven himself into the Ballon d’Or conversation. Not everyone is ready to anoint him.

The midfielder who cost £105 million in 2023 has become the heartbeat of Mikel Arteta’s side, the metronome and the muscle in an Arsenal team that finally dragged the title back to north London after 22 barren years. He has barely missed a beat or a game, anchoring a side that suddenly looks built to last.

At Emirates Stadium, Rice has felt like the missing piece. The big one. The one that turned an ambitious project into a trophy-winning machine.

Now the spotlight moves from club glory to the global stage. England, starved of a major trophy for 60 years, will head to North America this summer clinging to the hope that Rice can be the same catalyst for the Three Lions that he has been for Arsenal. If he lifts a World Cup there, his name will be shoved forcefully into the Ballon d’Or debate.

A global crown, on top of a Premier League title, would transform him from respected lieutenant into leading candidate. It would also help erase the sting of Champions League final disappointment with Arsenal, the one piece of club silverware that slipped away.

Yet Robbie Fowler is not ready to place Rice among the game’s ultimate elite.

The former England striker, speaking to GOAL on behalf of BetMGM, admires Rice. He made that clear. But when the conversation turned to the Ballon d’Or and to comparisons with Steven Gerrard, his tone sharpened.

“I like Declan Rice,” Fowler said, before drawing the inevitable line to the former Liverpool captain. When you talk about great English midfielders, Gerrard’s name always lands on the table. Rice’s, increasingly, does too.

Fowler doesn’t see them as equals. Not yet.

He pointed out that Rice has grown into a more complete player since joining Arsenal, his game stretched and refined under Arteta. The drive is there, the authority, the consistency. But Gerrard-level? In Fowler’s eyes, no. And Gerrard, he reminded everyone, never actually won the Ballon d’Or himself.

Rice, for now, sits outside that inner circle. The 2025 Ballon d’Or vote underlined it: 27th place, a long way down a list dominated by forwards and headline-makers. At that point he did not even have a major club trophy to his name, his performances judged without the sheen of silverware.

That has changed. The Premier League title has finally landed in his hands. He came agonisingly close to a historic double, driving Arsenal to the brink of a season that would have rewritten the club’s modern history. The margins were thin; the impression he left was not.

Fowler’s challenge to Rice was blunt: he has gone up a notch at Arsenal, he needs to go up another. Not a dig, he insisted, just a demand befitting a player of Rice’s stature. A fantastic midfielder, yes. A Ballon d’Or-level force? Not yet.

Rice himself would hardly argue with that. The Kingston upon Thames native has never claimed to be on Gerrard’s level. The comparison flatters, but it also fuels him. He has built a career on embracing the hard road, stepping into pressure rather than away from it.

Now comes the biggest test of all: carrying his club form into an England shirt at a tournament where reputations are made and Ballon d’Or campaigns are launched in a single summer.

If he can turn England’s long wait for glory into a celebration on North American soil, the conversation around Declan Rice will change again. This time, not as a player chasing Gerrard’s shadow, but as a midfielder carving out his own claim to the game’s highest individual prize.