Rodri | Man City player | Ballon d'Or winner

[Cheesy]

The Ballon is nonsense, it has always been nonsense - it means feck all beyond possibly this:

If someone fifty years from now looks at 2024 and sees that Rodri won it, they can be reasonably sure that Rodri was a very good player.

(Similarly, if they see a player who won the feckin' thing multiple times, they can be reasonably sure he was exceptionally good.)

To play devil's advocate in terms of the best player award I'd argue it's one of the better awards contrasted with lots of entertainment forms.

There's few years where the player who's won it isn't reasonably someone you'd class as one of the top three/five in the world. Even someone like Michael Owen, one of the more objectively weird awards they gave, one that'd probably sent the internet into a meltdown so bad bots start accidentally sending abuse to Clive Owen on Instagram, was somewhat understandable given he was in the form of his life and there arguably wasn't a clear, obvious winner.

 

[Chesterlestreet]

To play devil's advocate in terms of the best player award I'd argue it's one of the better awards contrasted with lots of entertainment forms.

There's few years where the player who's won it isn't reasonably someone you'd class as one of the top three/five in the world. Even someone like Michael Owen, one of the more objectively weird awards they gave, one that'd probably sent the internet into a meltdown so bad bots start accidentally sending abuse to Clive Owen on Instagram, was somewhat understandable given he was in the form of his life and there arguably wasn't a clear, obvious winner.

Yes - I agree. And that's what I meant by "very good player" = something like top 3/5 in the world (bearing in mind that certain positions will be favoured by the voters).

It is a useful indication - historically - of how good a player is/was.

 

[BlueMoonOutcast]

We had to sit and watch a 56 year old Messi take the Ballon d'Or from treble winning, premier league goal record scoring, European golden boot winning Erling Haaland and the club did it with grace.

Real Madrid and Vini have been utterly embarrassing.

 

[kouroux]

Some morons are still worked up over it all on social media platforms

 

[Ish]

Some morons are still worked up over it all on social media platforms

Yeah Mous, (un)fortunately for us we live in Africa, so we have other things to worry about

 

[kouroux]

Yeah Mous, (un)fortunately for us we live in Africa, so we have other things to worry about

I am hoping there is no power outage

 

[Ish]

I am hoping there is no power outage

ffs. At least loadshedding has subsided here over the last 5-6 months or so. Most houses here (those who can afford it anyway) have battery/inverters plus sonar panels these days.

 

[KeanoMagicHat]

To play devil's advocate in terms of the best player award I'd argue it's one of the better awards contrasted with lots of entertainment forms.

There's few years where the player who's won it isn't reasonably someone you'd class as one of the top three/five in the world. Even someone like Michael Owen, one of the more objectively weird awards they gave, one that'd probably sent the internet into a meltdown so bad bots start accidentally sending abuse to Clive Owen on Instagram, was somewhat understandable given he was in the form of his life and there arguably wasn't a clear, obvious winner.

Yeah, Raul probably should have won but at that time it did seem like Michael Owen was going to be an all-time great, it was 3 years after that 1998 World Cup goal against Argentina, which actually got him 4th in the 1998 Ballon d'Or at 18 years old (there was serious hype around him back then), the hat-trick against Germany would have been fresh in the memory too around the time of the voting.