Forecasting Ballon d'Or 2018 Voting Results

Ballon d'Or 2018 is around the corner and ardent football fans are vigorously debating whether it would be Mohammed Salah or Lionel Messi to win the trophy this year. It is extremely refreshing to see the fans engage in healthy banter around it while also engage in shifting the various Fan poll results to their side.

Cristiano Ronaldo is a serial winner when it comes to Ballon d'Or trophy and we could once again see him get his hands on the trophy. However, it is his former teammate in Luka Modric who is tipped to be the player to end the Ronaldo-Messi monopoly over the coveted trophy.

Here, in this article, let us try to forecast the Ballon d'Or 2018 Voting results based on the recent voting patterns in the FIFA player awards 2018 of Journalists from the countries. To go forward, let us understand the differences between the 2 awards.

Voting in FIFA Football awards 2018 was done by Captain, Coach and Media Personnel from 168 countries. While in Ballon d'Or 2018, voting will be done only by the Media Personnel. This reduces the number of voters.
Voters in FIFA Football awards 2018 had to vote for 3 player preferences with 5 points, 3 points and 1 point allotted for the 3 preferences in decreasing mode. While Ballon d'Or 2018 voters will have to vote for 5 player preferences with 6 points, 4 points,3 points,2 points and 1 point allotted for the 5 preferences in decreasing mode.
While FIFA Football awards 2018 were selected from the list of 10 shortlisted players, Ballon d'Or 2018 will be selected from the list of 30 shortlisted football players.

Now that we have understood the differences, let us now try to forecast the Ballon d'Or 2018 Voting results step by step. Before proceeding, please understand the analysis is strictly the personal opinion of the author based on the forecasting methodology employed and will in no way be a real indication of how the journalists from different countries will vote for a player on the D-day.

If you are still with me, let's move forward.

Step 1 of forecasting: The FIFA Football awards 2018 Voters List.

To start with the forecasting, let us take the full list of FIFA Football awards 2018 voters list which has the details of who voted for whom. From the list, the voting results of coaches and captains were removed and only the voting pattern of Media personnel of 168 countries were retained. In such a scenario, the results would have come as below:

Forecasted Ballon d'Or 2018 Results - step 1

This pattern at the first step clearly shows the considerable lead in the points that Luka Modric enjoys over other players. This is exactly how the actual journalists had made their preferences 2-3 months ago. One of the prime change after that is the allegations against Cristiano Ronaldo which will make the lead in points for Luka Modric even more comfortable.

Also, the call of Antoine Griezmann to have a French footballer as the Ballon d'Or 2018 winner may sway a few votes in his favour, but the changes would not be dramatic enough to replace Luka Modric as the prime favourite.

Step 2 of forecasting - Pattern of Ballon d'Or 2018.

Ballon d'Or 2018 voting pattern employs a selection of 5 players from the shortlist while the FIFA Football awards 2018 had a 3 tier structure. Now let's try to convert the list obtained in step 1 of our forecasting to a 5 tier structure with the Ballon d'Or 2018 weightage (6,4,3,2,1) pattern.

Here is how the results will pan out:

Forecasted Ballon d'Or 2018 Results - step 2

One primary aspect you can notice is that with this kind of weighting structure the lead of Luka Modric over Cristiano Ronaldo increased considerably.

Definitely, this is not the end result. I would expect a considerable chunk of votes of Cristiano Ronaldo which is shown here to spread out to other players favouring Antoine Griezmann, Kylian Mbappe and Mohamed Salah.

Also, even though the 10 shortlisted players considered above will surely have the large chunk of votes, their voting will be spread out over the 5 preferences and not just at the top 3 preferences as is depicted in this stage.

Step 3 of forecasting - Impact of the other 20 shortlisted players

Now, we need to see how well the other 20 players who were not involved in the FIFA Football awards 2018 will sway the voting. They are - Agüero Sergio, Alisson Becker, Gareth Bale, Karim Benzema, Edinson Cavani, Thibaut Courtois, Roberto Firmino, Diego Godín, Isco, N’golo Kanté, Hugo Lloris, Mario Mandzukic, Sadio Mané, Marcelo, Neymar, Jan Oblak, Paul Pogba, Ivan Rakitic, Luis Suárez and Sergio Ramos.

Many of these players like Neymar, Kante, Pogba, Aguero and Cavani has the flair to sway votes in their favour and it is this uncertainty that makes Ballon d'Or 2018 unpredictable, but surely not enough to replace Luka Modric from the top position.

Luka Modric had 694 points as per our previous stage analysis. While Cristiano Ronaldo had 430 points. You can expect a reduction of around 20-25% (100 points) in points for Ronaldo considering the recent allegations which will reduce his tally to around 330 points.

Now let’s assume the worst case scenario to take down Luka Modric considering he will receive 694 points exactly.

The Full reduction of 100 points from Cristiano Ronaldo tally goes to the next serious contender - Kylian Mbappe raising his tally of points to 390 (290+100).
Out of the 168 journalists voted for him in the first 3 preferences, there were only 67 journalists. Now let’s assume the other 101 journalists rate him at fourth preference slot of weightage 2 points. This will give his tally a boost of 202 points taking his final score to 592 points.

This is still more than 100 points below the score attained by Luka Modric.

Forecasted Ballon d'Or 2018 Winner - Luka Modric

Luka Modric at the Best FIFA Football Awards - Show

Considering the fact the terms of selection criteria of Ballon d'Or 2018 takes into account the recent performances during the year, there is absolutely no way another contender other than Luka Modric will win the title this year. He may not have a mad fan following unlike Mohammed Salah or Lionel Messi but is highly respected among the elite group of journalists as a dedicated footballer worthy of the title - Ballon d'Or winner 2018 along the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.

Luka Modric is our forecasted Ballon d'Or winner 2018.

Edited by Amar Anand