United have four players and two ex-players amongst the contenders: Wayne Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Paul Scholes are joined on the list by David Beckham and Fabien Barthez.
In all there are fifty players selected by the magazine and the winner is chosen after a vote by Europe's leading football writers.
The list includes half a dozen of the Greek national side that won the European Nations trophy with a further smattering of English Premiership based players including:
Frank Lampard, Petr Cech, Ricardo Carvalho, Didier Drogba, Patrick Vieira, Thierry Henry, Jose Antonio Reyes and Milan Baros. L'Equipe's house football magazine, France Football, will announce the winner of the Ballon d'Or on Dec 14.