The FIFA Ballon D’Or awards are starting to take on a very familiar feel, with Real Madrid and Barcelona home to the final three nominees for the fourth year in a row. Lionel Messi and Andres Iniesta of Barcelona will stand alongside Cristiano Ronaldo of Real Madrid. The awards ceremony will be held in Zurich on January 7th.
It is now 2008 since a player from outside one of the two clubs was nominated for a world player of the year award. Until 2010 the award was two separate awards, the Ballon D’Or and FIFA world player of the year award, which subsequently combined, yet both awards were perennially dominated by a player from one side of the El Clasico divide.
In the last 8 years only Kaka and Cristiano Ronaldo have won a world player of the year award while playing outside of Spain’s big two. Both moved to the Bernabeu shortly after their win.
If Messi wins, he becomes the most decorated player of all time, as he will win a record fourth world player of the year award. Last year the Argentinean joined Michel Platini, Johan Cruyff, Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo (of Brazil) and Marco Van Basten on 3 world player of the year awards, with only Platinin being able to match Messi’s feat of three in a row.
The Argentinean forward is the massive ¼ favourite to again take home the award, with Cristiano Ronaldo and Andres Iniesta looking set to be denied an award they would surely have won if they had not been born into Messi’s generation.
While Iniesta was instrumental in Spain’s Euro 2012 win, winning player of the tournament, he is still a long shot to finish above third in this vote. The incredible remoteness of Iniesta’s claims to be the world’s best player is perhaps the most resounding endorsement of how other-worldly Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have become. Andres Iniesta is one of the best midfielders of the past 20 years, with vision, passing and close control that could rival Zinedine Zidane. And, yet, he may never win the top individual prize. Iniesta, of course, lives in a different world to Zizou.
There had been a reasonable argument to be made earlier this year that Cristiano Ronaldo’s performance while helping Real Madrid overturn Guardiola’s Barcelona in last season’s La Liga would be the necessary push required to take him to his second award. However, a poor Euro 2012 and Messi’s feat of, almost certainly, breaking Gerd Muller’s scoring record in a calendar year (currently at 85, Messi is at 82 with a maximum of 6 matches left) has made a win for the Portuguese seem an increasingly remote possibility. That Messi enjoyed a good season with his national side only served to further seal up any potential gaps in his armour.
If the ceremony proceeds as expected it will culminate with the Barcelona man’s ascension to a private podium- above Zidane, Van Basten, Maradona and all others who have come before him.
A Messi win in Zurich on the 7th of January will not, and cannot, confirm any claims that the small boy from Rosario, Argentina is the greatest of all time. It would, however, make it a far trickier theory to disprove.
