Germany's captain Oliver KAHN became the first goalkeeper to win the adidas Golden Ball Award for a FIFA World Cup final competition. The 33-year old, whose heroic saves saw Germany through to the Final, obtained 25% of the votes cast by the media present at the third-place match in Daegu and the Final in Yokohama.

2002 FIFA World Cup: adidas Golden Ball Award
adidas Golden Ball Oliver KAHN
adidas Silver Ball RONALDO
adidas Bronze Ball HONG Myung Bo

votes in %
Oliver KAHN GER 147 25%
RONALDO BRA 126 21%
HONG Myung BO KOR 108 18%
RIVALDO BRA 93 16%
RONALDINHO BRA 54 9%
HASAN SAS TUR 26 4%
El Hadji DIOUF SEN 15 3%
ROBERTO CARLOS BRA 12 2%
Michael BALLACK GER 6 1%
Fernando HIERRO ESP 5 1%
592 100%

Three days before the Final, adidas, Official Sponsor, Supplier and Licensee of the 2002 FIFA World Cup(TM), had announced ten nominees for the adidas Golden Ball, arguably the most prestigious individual award in the world of football. Out of these ten nominated players, selected by the the FIFA Technical Study Group, representatives of the media elected the winners of the adidas Golden, Silver and Bronze Ball.

adidas presented a new trophy for this competition. The new trophy carries the names of each of the five former winners: Paolo ROSSI (ITA), Diego MARADONA (ARG), Toto SCHILLACI (ITA), ROMARIO (BRA) and RONALDO (BRA). The names of all future winners will be added to the trophy over the years. The design of the new adidas Golden Ball trophy is based on the historical adidas Chile football from 1962. The trophy will remain the property of adidas and FIFA and will be on permanent display in FIFA House, Zurich, Switzerland.

Previous winners:

1982 Spain Paolo ROSSI (ITA)
1986 Mexico Diego MARADONA (ARG)
1990 Italy Salvatore SCHILLACI (ITA)
1994 USA ROMARIO (BRA)
1998 France RONALDO (BRA)