The final verdict on who should win the Ballon d’Or

The polls have been counted and the finalists have been made official. Lionel Messi, Franck Ribery and Cristiano Ronaldo have been shortlisted for the 2013 FIFA Ballon d’Or. Very few will be surprised by trio making the final cut, but the final announcement in the second week of January is far from a foregone conclusion.

Here, we analyze all the three contenders for the prestigious individual award in world football, and give our conclusion on who should win it in five weeks time.

Lionel Messi

Lionel Messi has endured an injury plagued season and is perhaps foir the first time not a favourite for the Ballon d’Or trophy

Messi is seeking to win the award for the unprecedented fifth time in succession, but for the first time in years it is not certain to go to him. 2013 has been one of the most difficult years of his senior career. He may well have scored 45 goals in 46 games for club and country combined, and even may have won the La Liga for the sixth time with Barcelona, but a succession of injuries, however, made football’s Superman look human this year, following on form a calender year in which he netted a record 91 times.

Scoring 40 plus goals and winning the league title means his year was hardly a write-off, but still, if your life depended in 2013 on a player winning you a game of football, then for the first time since he first won the world player of the year in 2008, you might not have have picked him. If the Argentine does go on and win for the fifth consecutive year then it would look like he is winning by default, not merit. The would mean the trophy has no value and voters like creatures of habit.

Franck Ribery

If trophies is a criteria then there is a clear favourite in Ribery who has won everything there is to win in club football this season

Supporters of Ribery, meanwhile, have a strong case and will point to the huge effect his performances over the year had on Bayern Munich becoming the most successful club in Europe. The 30-year-old Frenchman, named the UEFA Player of the Season, was the star performer as the German side won the treble of the Bundesliga, DFB-Pokal and the Champions League. While his 22 goals in 51 matches might be a low return in comparison to the other two finalist, his impact upon Bayern’s dominance as a team cannot be underestimated. He was also key to France’s second leg playoff qualification to 2014 World Cup.

But if Ribery gets the Ballon d’Or for winning the treble with Bayern Munich, then why not players from that club? Why not Arjen Robben, for his winning goal in the Champions League final against Borussia Dortmund? Or why not Thomas Muller for three semifinal goals against Barcelona? Or Bayern captain Philipp Lahm? Becasue football is a team sport, team success should be a factor in choosing the winner, but not the only factor. Even if he was the best player in the world’s best team this year, that still doesn’t make him the world’s best footballer.

Cristiano Ronaldo

He has been the best player this season and if the trophy is to be given to the overall best performer, no one else comes close

Real Madrid’s Portuguese star Ronaldo is arguably the world’s most in form player as we reach the end of year, with his stunning hat-trick in Portugal’s World Cup qualifying second leg playoff against Sweden leaving most observers in awe. The former Manchester United star has racked up 67 goals in 57 games over the course of the calender year, with 33 of them coming in 21 games this season so far including hat-tricks against Northern Ireland, Galatasaray, Sevilla, Real Sociedad and the one in Solna.

There have been many people saying that Ronaldo has been helped by FIFA’s controversial decision to extend the voting period which allowed the World Cup playoffs to be taken into consideration, but no one seems to be coming up with a logical, fact-based explanation why the governing body would want the Portuguese skipper to win more than any other candidate. At the same time, his four goals that carried Portugal to the World Cup in Brazil shouldn’t be the decisive factor that win’s him the Ballon d’Or, as he hasn’t won any silverware with his club this year.

Conclusion

As said before, Ballon d’Or is an award given to the best individual performer in the year and so for me Cristiano Ronaldo deserves it. I know, he hasn’t won anything this year when compared with the likes of Messi or Ribery, but team success isn’t the only factor in choosing the winner. The reason why Ronaldo deserves the trophy is that he forms one half of the most engrossing and intense individual rivalries in football, with Messi. And this year he has been way better than the Argentine and even the Frenchman.