The Ballon d’Or conundrum
How can one pick an Oscar winner? Fortunately, that’s a question left to the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. To us mere mortals, that merciless task would indeed be an unwanted burden.
How can one measure art? Isn’t art to be enjoyed? Aren’t opinions, after all, subjective? Why does society feel the need to rank everything? Many questions that we, fortunately, do not have to answer.
Yet football is no different. It is a competitive sport, yes, but to many of its obsessed fanatics, it is also an art form. But unfortunately, the Ballon d’Or serves as an annual reminder that the football establishment chooses to go through the mundane task of ranking its individuals, and tries to convince us to care.
Why is it mundane? For a start, there is an infinite number of variables that go towards making what is, in the end, a subjective judgement. How does one judge an individual in a team sport? Is it fair to judge him solely based on the achievements of his team? What if we remove him from the context of the team, would it be logical to pick a winner from a team that hasn’t won anything of value? How do we reach a reasonable compromise?
Was Fabio Cannavaro the best player in the world in 2006? Probably not. But he was phenomenal, colossal even, in Italy’s World Cup 2006 win. He was faultless for the entire tournament, with his performance against Germany in the semi final up there with the all time great World Cup performances, and his leadership of the team the stuff of legend. He had even enjoyed a superb season, on an individual level, with Juventus, as they won the league title (later revoked). In spite of all that, could you say that he was better than, say, Juan Román Riquelme in 2006 (the year, that is, not the World Cup)? Was he a better player than Francesco Totti or Andrea Pirlo?
But then again, how do we even begin to compare between players in different positions? At this point, we might as well just pick the player with the most goals scored. After all, goals win games. Oh wait. Isn’t that how they decide it most years anyway?
To this writer, if we have to pick a winner, then Cannavaro deserved that award in 2006. But it seems unjust that players like Totti and Raúl González, maybe even Alessandro Del Piero and Thierry Henry (to name a few) went their entire careers without winning a Ballon d’Or.
Did Michael Ballack, who dragged Bayer Leverkusen to the brink of three trophies (the Bundesliga, German Cup, and the Champions League) and a very modest Germany side to the World Cup final in 2002 merit football’s greatest individual award? I would argue so. But Ronaldo Nazário scored eight goals en route to a World Cup win that sealed his dramatic comeback from a two year injury hell and won it instead.
Apart from that, Ronaldo scored 7 goals in 10 league matches with Internazionale, and 5 goals with Real Madrid before the award was given. Was he the best player in the world then? Or was his script the most romantic, his haircut the most famous, and his World Cup goals the most talked about story of the year?
What if the Ballon d’Or could only be awarded to a player once in his career? As a sort of lifetime achievement award, but instead given during his peak. I understand that a scenario like this would not unfold in the real world. But please, bear with me, and imagine a world where Ronaldo (1997) already has his Ballon d’Or. And while we’re living in a hypothetical world, let’s add the option of joint winners. That way, more players could get rewarded for the phenomenal season of their careers.
Before the World Cup 1998, there was a real hype (understatement) around Ronaldo, but there was another player with a shout to win the year’s best player — Del Piero. No one knew it back then, but Del Piero was probably at his peak (he would never be the same after an injury in November 1998 robbed him of much of his agility and acceleration). If the Ballon d’Or was given in June 1998, he would have won it.
Instead, he arrived at the World Cup carrying an injury, and had an entirely forgettable tournament. Cesare Maldini, Italy’s coach at the time, was rightfully criticized for favoring him over Roberto Baggio. Substitute Baggio’s miss in extra time against France at the quarter finals was a real sliding doors moment; Italy went on to lose on penalties, France ended up winning the World Cup, and Zinedine Zidane got awarded the Ballon d’Or as the cherry on top.
But Zidane’s club season wasn’t nearly as good as Del Piero’s, aside from the fact that he hardly set the World Cup on fire. In that context, it seems fairer for the 1998 Ballon d’Or to have been shared between Zidane and Del Piero.
1999 could be split as well between Rivaldo and the treble winning David Beckham (with a nod to Gabriel Batistuta). 2000 is Luís Figo’s, perhaps Alessandro Nesta to receive shared honors for captaining Lazio to the league and cup double while going within seconds of winning the Euro 2000 with Italy as well (Juan Sebastián Verón also deserves more than a mention). 2001, Totti and Raúl. 2002, Ballack. 2003, Pavel Nedvěd and Paolo Maldini (wouldn’t begrudge a 44 goal scoring Ruud van Nistelrooy recognition). 2004, Andriy Shevchenko and Henry. From 2005–2009 is fine. But then things took a turn for the worse.
The elephant(s) in the room are, undoubtedly, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. We get it, these two are greats of the game, with unmatched numbers to back their overall dominance over this team sport from 2008 till about 2018. However, a host of Barcelona players not named Messi (like Xavi Hernández, Neymar Júnior, or Luis Suárez), an Inter star from their 2010 treble winning season (Diego Milito or Wesley Sneijder), a Bayern Munich mainstay when they were Europe’s strongest (Franck Ribéry or Arjen Robben), and a German when they won the World Cup in 2014 (Philipp Lahm, Manuel Neuer, Toni Kroos, Thomas Müller), a serially underrated talisman like Antoine Griezmann, and an instinctive defender with a legendary leadership and a knack for iconic goals like Sergio Ramos all deserved their share of the limelight as well. If a Ballon d’Or could only be awarded once, perhaps most of these names (maybe others as well) would have received their due recognition.
In spite of its flaws, namely the subjective nature of ranking individuals, especially in a team sport, the Ballon d’Or perhaps used to serve a useful purpose. In eras past, when not all matches where televised, and people only heard of those supposed heroes from afar, maybe this award — whether accurate or not — was a good way to document the greatest players in a certain year. Looking at the top three from each year since its start in 1956, most names are recognizable. In a way, these lists make sense.
But at the risk of sounding cynical, there is a glaring lack of appreciation for defenders, goalkeepers, and even midfielders throughout its history. The fact that non-Europeans weren’t included before 1995 further diminishes its historical value. After all, how many Ballon(s) d’Or would have Diego Maradona or Edson Pelé won?
But in modern times, when every single moment of top level football is televised in a technology that looks better than real life, what role does such an award actually serve? We already have experts and pretend experts analyzing every minute, every second of top level action. Every time a defender puts their soles on a football, hundreds of articles are written to analyze why. Do we really need a panel to then tell us who is the world’s best player?
Rather, the Ballon d’Or has transformed fully into a gala (perhaps it always was?), a show where football celebrities all gather to celebrate which football star’s brand is at its strongest. But that’s it.
If we look at the year 2023, who is most likely the best player in the world?
Is it Kylian Mbappé? Who, based on ability, is probably the best in the world, but plays his trade in the French Ligue 1, which isn’t as competitive as its counterparts in England, Spain, or even Italy.
Is it Erling Haaland, who contributes nothing to his team’s cause apart from the simple matter of… scoring goals? Yet his staggering 52 goals last season fired Manchester City to win the three most important club trophies they competed for, not least the highly coveted Champions League for their first time.
Is it John Stones (who wasn’t even shortlisted) or Rodri, who were arguably as important as Haaland to City’s treble win?
Is it Vinícius Júnior, Real Madrid’s talisman, or even Jude Bellingham, who joined the most historical club in the world at the mere age of 20, yet apparently cannot stop scoring even if he tried as he leads them to one win after the other? 13 goals in 13 games so far is insane.
According to the Ballon d’Or 2023, it is still Lionel Messi, for a record 8th time. Why, one might ask? Because he led Argentina to win the World Cup in… 2022 (I know the new award rules, but it still doesn’t make sense, however a precious little makes sense with a winter World Cup).
Messi doesn’t need the 8th Ballon d’Or to prove his greatness. He probably doesn’t even care about it. His legacy is already untouchable. To many, he’s the greatest of all time, and to the rest, he’s still one of the greatest. The 8th Ballon d’Or, won while he’s — rightfully — chilling in Miami after nearly 20 years of grinding at the highest level only serves as a reminder that this award, like many other things about football nowadays, is stuck far away from reality.
Messi probably won’t win the award another time. He probably wouldn’t even bother showing up next year if they still nominate him. Perhaps if he ended up winning it for a 9th time, it wouldn’t even feel good as much as it would become a burden. By the law of diminishing returns, surely Messi has reached a point where one more Ballon d’Or would actually mean nothing to him. It might even annoy him.
It has lost its value. Just as it has for any sensible football fan around the time Messi and Cristiano started monopolizing it. Before that, it was at best a valuable recognition, at worst a vanity award, and most of the time just some good fun. Nowadays, it is just a waste of everyone’s time, not least Messi’s.
