Football, like many other sports, is increasingly marketed around an almost cultish obsession with leading personalities. In this modern game, individual awards are given more credence than ever, but football is a team sport, so does it even matter?
Part of the problem with answering that question is that no one really knows what the criteria are. Is it the reward for the best player in the world for the past twelve months, or is it, in fact, simply an arbitrary trinket for whichever player has won the right combination of trophies?
Now, in fairness, this latter scenario rarely produces the winner of the competition, but the fact that Jorginho was considered after winning the Champions League and Euros in 2021 could have made for a truly ridiculous spectacle. Another average player who could have undeservedly won was Vinicius Junior last year, again, almost entirely down to the Champions League, and not a reflection of his modest talents. The fact that he and Real Madrid humiliated themselves with their antics simply added to the farce.
Arbitrary awards of the Ballon d’Or based only on trophies also meant Cristiano Ronaldo, a very good player but not a great one, won several. This had the additional ill-effect of prolonging the Messi-Ronaldo rivalry, an utterly tedious and pointless saga.
Zidane was a great player, and should have won in 2000, but he won in 1998 after winning the World Cup and scoring in the final, a tournament in which he was largely mediocre, and there were several far better players over the course of that year. Baggio and Ronaldo were comfortably the two best players in the world, and Zidane was likely only the second-best player at Juventus, behind Del Piero.
These are just a handful of examples. This is not to say that they are not deserving winners, just that the inherent value of their awards is lessened by the cheap ones. For what it’s worth, while I would have chosen Yamal, I cannot argue that Ousmane Dembele has been an undeserving winner, and neither was Rodri in 2023. But with such a high rate of misses compared to hits, it is difficult to place too much weight on the trophy.
After all, Maradona was not even eligible in his peak years, and no one thinks any less of him as a player.
Image credits: “Ballon D’Or” by Simon Harriyott is licensed under CC BY 2.0.