The Race For the Ballon d’Or
One of the most prestigious individual footballing awards a player can attain is the Ballon d’Or. It is crowned to the player who had the best season, voted for by 100 journalists from FIFA's 100 top-ranked member nations. A week ago, France Football who award the Ballon d’Or, released the 30 finalists for both the men's and women's categories. In the men's category, superstars such as Vinicius Jr, Mbappe, Bellingham, Salah, and current holder Karim Benzema are named.
The two front runners for the 22/23 season are 7-time Ballon d’Or winner Lionel Messi and treble winner Erling Haaland. The rationale used by the journalists who do vote can stretch to anything, with the award being subjected to some scrutiny over the years due to voting biases. This year, regardless of which player wins the award out of Messi and Haaland, there will be outrage from those who thought the other deserved the prize.
Messi at 35 had another year where he was on cloud 9, having won the most elusive trophy in football, the World Cup. This trophy cements him as one of the greatest players, or the best to ever play the game. In the tournament, he scored 7 goals, and he won the Player of the Tournament. He also became the first player to win 5 Player of the Match awards in a men's World Cup, in addition to having the joint most assists, solidifying his case for being the best player on planet Earth last season. Looking past the World Cup which completed his trophy cabinet, he also won Ligue 1 and the French Super Cup. Many criticize the strength of the French league as PSG are so dominant, but that does not take away from the fact that they managed to win those trophies. In the league, Messi contributed 16 goals and 16 assists in 32 games, showing how integral he was to his PSG side.
In his first season at Man City, the most dominant team in world football, Haaland essentially completed club football. He helped the club to their first-ever Champions League, being the top scorer in the competition with 12 goals in 11 appearances. In what is deemed by most football fans as the most difficult league in the world, Haaland tore apart the competition in the Premier League. In his first season, he won the Premier League, the Golden Boot and broke the record for the most goals in a single season in the Premier League, beating the old record held by Mo Salah by 4 goals by scoring 36 goals. Another record he broke was the fastest player to score 3 hattricks in the Prem, it took him only 8 games, and the second fastest was Michael Owen with 48 games. It’s clear he is on a different level to anything we have seen before in English football and records are falling at his feet. Manchester City also won the FA Cup, meaning that they won the treble. Haaland won the treble in his first season at Man City. The treble is a feat which had not been completed since 1998/99, it's not a coincidence that United’s rivals managed it in the first season where they had Haaland. In total, he scored 52 goals and achieved 9 assists in all competitions last season.
Both of these players were on another level from everyone else and both of them achieved everything that they set out to do. For Messi, his goal was undoubtedly to win the World Cup, he managed to do so in an emphatic fashion by scoring two goals in the final and converting his penalty in the shootout. Haaland was bought by City to win them the Champions League, he did this and went above and beyond to win them the treble. With all this being said, who do you think deserves to lift the Ballon d’Or on the 30th of October?
