Why France Football need to improve their selection of Ballon d'Or voting experts

So Luka Modric at the helm, Cristiano Ronaldo following him on 2nd, Antoine Griezmann on third. No podium finish for the "fifth-best" player in the world, who won Barcelona the game against Sevilla, without question single-handedly.

When the results were out for Ballon d'Or and Lionel Messi's fans pleaded his case, they were termed as cry-babies and apologists. To be absolutely blatant, the Ballon d'Or, with all due respect, is not as it should be.

The Ballon d'Or is not the prestigious title that we should be looking at to judge great players. Otherwise, Modric would have got much more appreciation for his much-deserved win.

The problem wasn't with awarding Modric the prize; the main issue was the fact that Griezmann and Kylian Mbappe finished ahead of Messi. Even though it can be argued that it was expert opinion and much more informed than what we fans feel at home, it had more than its fair share of controversies.

My FIFA player of the year selection should have been tallied as (in correct order): Messi, Modric, Ronaldo, Salah, Griezmann... I’ve voted for this prestigious award for years without issue. Don’t know what went wrong. But I do have a record of my vote...
— Lasana Liburd (@lasanaliburd) December 4, 2018

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The above tweet was from Trinidad and Tobago journalist Lasana Liburd. When France Football released the votes from all the journalists, his votes were in reverse order ie. Griezmann, Salah, Ronaldo, Modric, Messi. So what if such mistakes happened with more people?

The name that you are reading under Comores, Abdou Boina, is listed to exclude Messi from his top 5 and putting Mbappe at first. But there was a report from a local source, Al Watman, that the news outlet closed 6 years ago, and that the journalist who voted never actually existed. The site was closed down in 2012 too.

To add to all the controversies, France Football never actually came out in their own defense. That itself is a big mistake on their part as people deserve answers to all the claims that are made. The least they could have done was admit it was a mistake; it wouldn't have altered the results anyway.

Should we actually call trust what the experts are voting? Juanma Rodriguez, a Spanish journalist, tweeted his top 10 footballers on Twitter today. This came one day after the Messi masterclass against Sevilla in La Liga.

Juanma Rodriguez's tweet which was deleted later on due to the shower of abuses on him.

Can any sane football follower agree with this list? How can anyone comprehend Gareth Bale and Vinicius listed in the top 10 footballers of the world right now? And that they are actually better than Messi right now?

There doesn't seem to be any purpose for this tweet, other than degrading Messi. Otherwise, he wouldn't even have put him on #10. He put him there on purpose, to show that Modric, Benzema, Vinicius, and of all people Gareth Bale, who has spent more time in the hospital bed than on the pitch, are actually better than Leo.

If you follow El Chiringuito and know Spanish, you would know what Rodriguez usually talks about. He likes putting down Barcelona and Messi; he didn't even acknowledge Messi's performance yesterday and instead, posted this so-called list of best players on Twitter.

Now if the opinion of biased people like him didn't matter, then there would have been no problem. He would be just another random person posting on a social platform. But alas, Rodriguez is a journalist who votes for the most prestigious individual calendar year award for footballers.

How many more people like him is France Football allowing to vote for the award? Even last year there were people who put Benzema as #1 in their list. That shows how France Football has no effective filtering policy while choosing experts who vote.

Then why do we need to follow such awards? What significance do they have? Do they really matter at all?

This is not to take anything away from the award winners. The FIFA award had similar rankings, but no such controversy was reported in it because hopefully, such people don't vote for it.

France Football needs to seriously reconsider its elite panel of voters; some of them just don't deserve to be there. The stars who give their everything on the pitch shouldn't be insulted by random pundits due to favoritism, and definitely not by people who haven't even kicked a ball with their feet.

Why do players like Modric face criticism for winning an award? It is because people with such biased views are a part of the voting panel.