Why the Ballon d’Or should be trashed

Neuer, Messi, Ronaldo – the 3 candidates for winning the Ballon d’Or, 2014

When we talk about football, the first thing to pop into our heads is that it is a team sport. It is an 11v11 game where the essence is often the ability of players to gel well to achieve their common goal (pun intended). May it be a quick counter attack or some manic last ditched defending, team work is pivotal at most times. So why then, in a sport with its foundation based on working together, is so much emphasis placed on the individual?

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for individual brilliance - it is what spices up the game. The absence of Eden Hazard’s dribbles or Neymar’s trickery will only make our beloved sport poor. But is it necessary to place these individual credentials at such a high pedestal? I believe not.

FIFA Ballon d’Or – A marketing gimmick?

The Ballon d’Or award was started by magazine, ‘France Football’ in the year 1956, and was barely more than a kind compliment by experts and writers whose opinions on footballing matters were valued. But since the award merged with the FIFA World Player of the Year Award in 2010, it has become nothing but an ‘event’ which has started losing its sheen.

In a market dominated, commercial era, the Ballon d’Or has been reduced to another one of the many PR gimmicks which creates a large debate amongst fans across social media websites.

This very fact was proven when just a few days back Real Madrid’s official website released a statement endorsing why one of the shortlisted candidates this year, Cristiano Ronaldo, should be bestowed with the Ballon d’Or for the 2nd consecutive year.

We all know that football as a sport has changed a lot in the past few years with the sort of money involved and a need to get as many fans on board as possible, but to give so much importance to such awards and campaigning for it is just ridiculous and utterly embarrassing to say the least. It comes to show the sense of entitlement that is prevailing in the sport these days rather than just purely focusing on the game.

No clear judging parameters

The problem with this Ball Of Gold doesn’t just stop here. There is no clear parameter specified for the selection of the winner. Should it be based solely on individual performances? Or should the achievements of the team the players play for being taken into consideration as well? This has been a never ending debate, and one that was largely talked about post the 2010 Ballon d’Or results.

Lionel Messi was the winner with amazing individual accolades, having scored 47 goals in all competitions that season, while also revolutionizing the ‘false 9’ position in a team that already boasted of Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Thierry Henry.

Wesley Sneijder on the other hand may not have scored as many goals, but was the key man in guiding Inter Milan to a successful campaign in the Champions League, and also performed magnificently in the World Cup held in South Africa. However, UEFA Club Midfielder of the Year and super consistent Sneijder lost out to Messi and it’s still a big talking point.

Which brings us to this year. Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Manuel Neuer have been shortlisted as the candidates to win the award for 2014. The problem which arises is how is one to compare the performances of attacking players to those of a goalkeeper whose roles are as different as day and night? If we say that Ronaldo’s goals and assists propelled his team to a brilliant season, are we undermining the contributions of Neuer simply because his job is to stop the goals from flowing?

If you don’t score, you don’t win

The bitter fact is that the art of NOT scoring goals isn’t spoken of in the same breath as that of creating goals. The world has always been more kind towards attacking players rather than the defensive ones, and this very sentiment cascades into the awarding of the Ballon d’Or every year.

Since its inception in 1956, only 4 defensive players have won it - Franz Beckenbauer, Matthias Sammer, Lev Yashin (the only goalkeeper) and Fabio Cannavaro. Neuer himself summed up the situation very well. "As a goalkeeper, it is something quite special. To reach the last three makes me very proud. You can see how hard it is for a goalkeeper. What's mostly left after a match? The scenes in front of the goal where the attackers are the highlights of the play.”

To add to the attacking-defending conundrum, the fact that this is an era dominated by Messi and Ronaldo only makes it harder for any other candidate to get a sniff at winning the award. The aura surrounding the two greatest players today often downplays the performances of other candidates, hence making it a 2-horse race with another candidate just thrown in to make it look competitive.

With the awards ceremony for the Ballon d’Or, 2014 fast approaching, the football fraternity and fans will once again be debating who the winner should be. The funny thing is that none of them would be right or wrong in their reasoning. While Ronaldo scored the most goals and won the Champions League, UEFA Super Cup and Copa del Rey, Messi guided his team almost single-handedly in the World Cup and scored just 3 goals lesser than Ronaldo.

At the other end of the spectrum, Neuer kept the most clean sheets and conceded the least goals in the season while also playing a paramount role in winning the World Cup, Bundesliga and DFB-Pokal Cup. They all deserve to win the awards in their own rights and this is exactly why handing it to one particular individual is unfair; especially when the playing field is so uneven.

So come the awards ceremony on 12th January, 2015, I will be sitting with my laptop and reading the reactions on Twitter and Facebook; quietly laughing my head off on the meaningless arguments that will ensue.