The last 14 years has seen mainly two players namely Lionel Messi and Christiano Ronaldo conquer the world of football, winning the prestigious and highly contested Ballon D'or award 13 out of 14 times with only the 2018 award going properly deserved to Luka Modric of Croatia and Real Madrid after a fine display for club and country. Many would argue (and quite correctly I might add) that knowing the maestros of the game in Lionel Messi and Christiano Ronaldo, at this stage in their careers aged 34 and 36 respectively, their levels of performance has dropped and as such shouldn't be in contention for top honours in the world of football for individual honours. And owing to the performances of the respective clubs they play for, I think that argument holds water but seeing that its an individual award and not one given for the collective effort of the team, I think they still need to be on the list of the best footballers in the world when we consider the stats they put up every year is still phenomenal for their ages.
The 2021 Ballon D'or awards were held yesterday in Paris, France with Lionel Messi taking top honours for a record seventh time, getting two more of the highly coveted awards over Christiano Ronaldo. Second place went to Robert Lewandowski of Poland and Bayern Muchen, a player whom many believe is more deserving of the award especially as he was head and shoulders above his peers last year when the world was on its head due to the Corona virus and the awards cancelled. Third place was swooped up by Italy and Chelsea's Jorginho who was instrumental in winning the Champions League and Euros for club and country respectively. France and Real Madrid's Karim Benzema came 4th and the ever hard-working Christiano Ronaldo settling for 6th.
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Concerns from football fans and supporters all around the world is if the award given to Lionel Messi is one he deserves, and this gets me thinking of the selection process of the awards. I am in no way saying that I do not believe that Messi didn't deserve the award this year but the process in which the selection is made makes room for some level of bias and would make it look like a popularity contest instead of a true measure of the world's best footballer. Voting for the Ballon D'or according to Goal.com is selected through the votes of National team coaches and captains. This in my opinion tends to void the merit of the award like so many other individual awards given in team sports, as the voting process could have been done with some level of bias.
Imagine being the national team captain of a not very well known footballing nation that has been privileged to play against one of the nominees and after the match, you ask for the jersey of one of the nominees and he happily gifts it to you. Don't you think kind gestures like this from nominees could automatically take away the ability of the national team captain to be unbiased?
In essence, unless there is a proper metric of measurement in place that helps the selection process, the Ballon D'or in my opinion would be one of the biggest popularity contests of all time. According to FIFA, the criteria for voting a player best is mainly attributed to his conduct on and off the pitch, this leaves room for a lot of biases to come into play as regards the votes as it contains too many grey areas.
By the way, being a Messi supporter I am glad this particular popularity contest is his favour, but you will probably never hear me complain about whoever won it except the system of selection is improved.
