5 reasons why moving to Barcelona will make Philippe Coutinho a Ballon d'Or contender

#4 The winner often comes from a Champions League winning side

Coutinho's chances of winning the Champions League are better with Barca

If you look back at the list of Ballon d’Or winners, one fact immediately springs to mind and that’s that the winner – particularly in the pre-Messi-Ronaldo era – usually comes from the side that wins that season’s Champions League.

Ronaldo’s first win in 2008 came after he’d won the UCL with Manchester United, Kaka won it in 2007 after winning it with Milan, Marco Van Basten in 1989 after winning it with Milan, and so forth.

Champions League runners-up have also produced plenty of Ballon d’Or winners, too – Zinedine Zidane of Juventus in 1998, Hristo Stoichkov of Barcelona in 1994, Pavel Nedved of Juventus in 2003, and so on.

And simply put – no offence to Liverpool – Barcelona have a much higher chance of winning the Champions League than Coutinho’s former club. This means in turn that the Brazilian wizard has a higher chance of taking the Ballon d’Or himself.

The other way for a player to win the Ballon d’Or tends to be through his international performances – particularly in years that there’s a big international tournament like the World Cup or the European Championships.

Matthias Sammer and Fabio Cannavaro both won the Ballon d’Or after starring at international level. And with 2018 being a World Cup year and Brazil amongst the favourites to win it – with Coutinho starring for them – well, you do the math.