England duo pay classy tribute to Bonmati after WC rival's Ballon d'Or triumph

Lionesses duo Georgia Stanway and Keira Walsh shared their admiration of new Ballon d’Or Feminin winner Aitana Bonmati after the Spain and Barcelona midfielder claimed the award on Monday evening.

The 25-year-old collected the prize in Paris to cap off a sensational year of personal and team success in which the Catalan playmaker scooped up every women’s prize available.

Indeed, a stellar club campaign saw Bonmati named the SuperCopa MVP, Uefa’s Player of the Year and Uefa’s Women’s Champions League Player of the Tournament while also collecting a treble with Barcelona and a first-ever Women’s World Cup with Spain, where she was also handed the tournament’s Golden Ball award for her performance in the 1-0 final win over England.

Bonmati saw off heady competition amongst the prestigious award’s shortlist, including Lionesses stars Millie Bright, Rachel Daly, Mary Earps and Stanway. And Stanway and Walsh, whose omission among the nominees came as a surprise to many, showed their support for Bonmati.

The duo re-posted an image onto their Instagram stories from Nike’s social media account which depicted a photo of Bonmati with the words’ ‘Raise the bar, Football will follow’ written across along with the accompanying caption: “The best season. Of any footballer. Ever.”

Stanway tagged her photo with the word ‘Mega’, while Walsh went with ‘Incredible’ to describe the feat of her Barcelona team-mate.

Neither Stanway nor Walsh were in attendance at the Theatre du Chatelet on Monday due to a scheduling clash. The Lionesses face Belgium on Tuesday in a crucial Nations League match and Stanway revealed in a pre-match press conference that the nominated England players decided to forego attending the ceremony due to match preparation.

“Obviously it’s very cool [being] nominated. It’s nice to get the accolade, as well as a lot of my teammates in the Lionesses. There are a few people I would also add to the list that have also had a very successful year.

"That’s something that we spoke about as a playing group and we just said it would be nice in the future if it wasn’t on a matchday -1 so that we could enjoy the experience."

Stanway, who helped German giants to a fifth Frauen-Bundesliga title in their history and supplied 10 goals in 37 appearances across all competitions last season, finished 23rd in the final Ballon d'Or rankings. Meanwhile Chelsea defender Millie Bright finished 11th, Rachel Daly of Aston Villa finished 10th and United goalkeeper Earps claimed fifth.