5 great players who never won the Ballon d'Or

#4 Claude Makélélé

Imagine a player so good at his duties that a position was named after him, that's Claude Makelele for you. The Frenchman was so adept at his position that the defensive midfield role came to be known as the Makelele role.

When Real Madrid sold Makelele, Zidane said-

"Why put another layer of gold paint on the Bentley when you are losing the entire engine?"

For years he used his engines to break up attacks from excellent defensive positions and fed the ball to the creative players to build up counter attacks. Win the ball, play it simple, that's the Makelele role.

#3 Andrés Iniesta

Andres Iniesta came close to winning the Ballon d'Or on two occasions, in 2010 when he came 2nd and in 2012 when he came 3rd. He lost to his former Catalan teammate Lionel Messi on both the occasions.

The Spanish maestro pushed his team to European glory in the Euro 2012 when he was named the man of the match in half of the games and was named the player of the tournament. All of this after he brought the World Cup to Spain in 2010 by scoring in the finals.

You can argue that somewhere in the supremacy of Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, Iniesta went a little bit underappreciated.