Is the FIFA Ballon d'Or a true reflection of the best football player in the world?
Every year, the FIFA Ballon d’Or award is supposed to celebrate the best player in world football. There have been some legitimately great players who were awarded this prestigious honour. But more often than not, it is the strikers that end up winning the award. And over the past few years, it has been a battle between Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, with no other player even coming close to consideration; so much so that even if you made the top 3, that was an achievement.
It begs the question: Does football only recognize and reward the forwards and ignore the more defensive minded players? A quick glance at all the previous Ballon d’Or winners in previous years takes us back to as far as 2006 for the last time a defender won the award, and he had to win the World Cup for that to happen. Paolo Maldini, easily one of the greatest defenders to play the game, could never win the Ballon d’Or.
There is perhaps only one conclusion that can be drawn from this: The award functions are less about celebrating achievements, and more about playing to the crowd.
Fans across the world, whether they are watching it in the stadium, watching it on tv or illegally downloading a live stream on their laptops, all root for the player who exhibits skills that can actually be seen rather than the ones that can’t be. Therefore, an attempt at a goal is always valued more than an important block that stops a counter attack from developing.
Now, if that were a sliding tackle, people would applaud. But most defenders don’t do sliding tackles for obvious reasons: it can’t be done with perfection every time, there are too many variables, and if you miss, you either injure the player or land embarrassingly on your backside while the forward goes on to probably score the goal that cost your team the game.
And since it is journalists who are the ones voting for the best player in the world, they generally put their votes on the player that they can explain away with easily visible stats so that their choices are not severely questioned and they can defend their journalistic integrity. This is not to put blame on them in any way. They report on football, and they are just like the fans, only with the added layer of being able to do their reporting without any bias. But it certainly does not make for any bold, if right, choices every year.
So what should be the criteria for choosing the best player in the world? Here are a few that I think should certainly be taken into account.
Individual Skill
This is perhaps the only criteria in which the awards are totally faithful. All the Ballon d’Or winners so far are without a doubt skillful football players who have shown that they can hold their own with the ball at their feet and do some magic with it. And in this respect, perhaps Messi and Ronaldo are indeed the most deserving in recent times.
But there have been others too who could be considered to be possessing brilliant skill, like the aforementioned Maldini, or Philipp Lahm or Gianluigi Buffon, etc. But they don’t even seem to get into the top 3, let alone win the award.
Influence on the team
While Ronaldo and Messi have had a big influence on their respective club teams, it is a telling sign that they have not been able to do much for their countries, because football is more than just individual skill. It is a team game, and for one player to have an influence on the entire team, for both club and country, would truly show that he deserves to be celebrated as the best player in the world. Fabio Cannavaro did just that, and in more recent times, perhaps Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Philipp Lahm come to mind.
Positional flexibility
For a player to be the best at one position is perhaps easy, but the true test of an intelligent footballer is when he can switch positions and still be able to give a world class performance. Germany’s Lahm is the perfect example of this, and it was not just moving across the back line, but also the seamless transition he made from defence to midfield that shows how much more of a better player he is than the rest of the competition.
Trophies
And of course, trophies should certainly be taken into consideration, because nobody remembers the team that finished second, right? But due consideration should be given to all trophies, and not just the La Liga or the UEFA Champions League. Bayern Munich winning the treble only got Franck Ribery to 3rd place in the awards, while a domestic double got Ronaldo the award. It just doesn’t seem right.
Overall, perhaps this year’s most deserving player that should ideally win the Ballon d’Or is Philipp Lahm, but it wouldn’t be a surprise if it was Messi who won it once again. Or even Ronaldo. One of the two, for sure.