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#2 No Champions League glory
A great amount of emphasis is placed on Europe's elite competition and the continental tournament holds, perhaps, the biggest weight when it comes to Ballon d'Or votings. Consequently, in the last five years, the winner of the UEFA Champions League has lifted the Ballon d'Or award on four occasions.
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And that fact does not bode well for Lionel Messi as his side crashed out of UEFA Champions League after suffering a giant-killing at the hands of AS Roma in the quarter-finals of the tournament last season.
Not to mention Messi himself also failed to live up to his billing in this year's Champions League with a score of 6 goals and 2 assists. Granted that the aforementioned tally does not seem so awful, it pales into insignificance when compared with the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Roberto Firmino and Mohamed Salah.
