The Ballon d’Or used to mean something simple: this is the best footballer on the planet. One name. One trophy. No debate. Or at least, the debate was contained — the kind of argument you’d have in a barbershop or a bar, passionate but ultimately respectful of the award’s authority.
That authority is gone. And honestly? It might not be coming back.
The post-Messi-Ronaldo era has exposed something that their dominance papered over for nearly two decades: the Ballon d’Or’s methodology is fundamentally flawed, its biases are structural, and the entire concept of naming a single best player in the world’s most complex team sport may be an exercise in absurdity.
Bold claim? Maybe. But hear me out.
The Voting System Is a Joke
Let’s start with the mechanics. The Ballon d’Or is voted on by journalists — one selected representative from each FIFA member nation. This means a journalist from a country with no professional football league has the same voting weight as a journalist who covers the Champions League every week. A voter who watches three matches a month has the same influence as one who watches three matches a day.
The result is a voting pool that is wildly inconsistent in its knowledge base, its access to matches, and its analytical framework. Some voters are among the most respected football journalists in the world. Others are, charitably, making educated guesses based on reputation and highlights.
This system was tolerable when the answer was obvious. When Messi or Ronaldo was clearly the best player in the world — which was the case for most years between 2008 and 2023 — the flaws in the voting didn’t matter much. The right answer was so apparent that even an imperfect process would arrive at it.
But now? Now the margins between the top candidates are razor-thin. The difference between the winner and the fifth-place finisher might be a matter of subjective preference, positional bias, or which tournament happened to fall in the voting window. In a close race, the system’s flaws aren’t minor inconveniences. They’re determinative.
The Champions League Obsession
There is an unwritten rule in Ballon d’Or voting that has become so consistent it might as well be carved in stone: if you win the Champions League and perform well in the knockout rounds, you’re the frontrunner. If you don’t, good luck.
This creates a perverse incentive structure. A midfielder who dominates his domestic league, plays 50 outstanding matches, and carries his team to a title — but whose Champions League campaign ends in the quarterfinals — will almost certainly lose to a player who had a good Champions League run, even if his overall body of work across the season was less impressive.
The Champions League is a cup competition. By nature, it involves randomness — the luck of the draw, referee decisions in single moments, injuries at critical times. Basing the sport’s most prestigious individual award heavily on performance in a tournament where variance is inherent is a methodological problem that the award has never seriously addressed.
It also creates a geographic bias. Players in leagues that are guaranteed multiple Champions League spots have more opportunities to produce the kind of showcase performances that catch voters’ eyes. A brilliant player in the Eredivisie, the Primeira Liga, or the Scottish Premiership is structurally disadvantaged before a ball is even kicked.
Can You Even Award Individual Excellence in a Team Sport?
This is the deeper question that the Ballon d’Or doesn’t want to confront. Football is the most team-dependent of all major sports. A brilliant striker needs service from creative midfielders. A dominant midfielder needs a defensive structure that gives him freedom. A goalkeeper’s statistics are as much a reflection of the defence in front of him as his own ability.
No player operates in isolation. And yet the Ballon d’Or asks voters to pretend that they do — to extract an individual performance from its team context and compare it against other individual performances in entirely different team contexts.
How do you compare a forward who scores prolifically in a dominant team that creates dozens of chances per game with a midfielder who transforms a mediocre team into a competitive one through sheer force of will? How do you weigh a defender’s contribution — inherently less visible, less statistical, less glamorous — against an attacker’s goal tally?
The honest answer is: you can’t. Not objectively. Not fairly. The Ballon d’Or pretends otherwise, and the result is an award that reflects narrative momentum and positional bias more than any coherent evaluation of individual excellence.
The Narrative Problem
Football media runs on narratives. Redemption arcs. Breakout seasons. Underdog stories. Dynasty confirmations. These narratives are compelling — they’re what make football coverage engaging and emotional. But they have no business influencing who wins the Ballon d’Or.
And yet they clearly do. Voters are human. They’re susceptible to the same storytelling instincts that drive coverage. A player whose season fits a neat narrative — the comeback, the unexpected triumph, the new king — has an advantage over a player whose excellence is steady, consistent, and narratively boring.
This is how you end up with results that feel wrong even as they’re announced. Not because the winner didn’t have a good season, but because the process selected for the most compelling story rather than the most excellent player. And when the award’s credibility depends on people believing it identifies the best, selecting for narrative instead undermines the entire enterprise.
What Would Fix It?
If the Ballon d’Or wants to remain relevant — and that’s not guaranteed — it needs structural reform. Some proposals worth considering:
Reduce the voting pool. Instead of one journalist per FIFA nation, create a panel of expert voters — former players, coaches, and analysts who watch football at the highest level consistently. A smaller, more qualified panel would produce more informed results.
Weight the criteria. Publish clear, specific criteria for what the award is supposed to measure. Is it the best individual performance across a full season? The most impactful player? The most statistically dominant? Pick one and stick with it. The current ambiguity allows voters to apply wildly different standards, which is why the results feel arbitrary.
Separate by position. This is the most radical proposal, but arguably the most logical. Create separate awards for the best goalkeeper, defender, midfielder, and forward. Comparing players across positions is inherently apples-to-oranges. Separating the awards would allow genuine like-for-like comparison and would give visibility to positions that the current award systematically undervalues.
Decouple from the Champions League. The evaluation period should be a full calendar year of football across all competitions. Domestic league performance, cup competitions, and international tournaments should all carry weight. Removing the Champions League’s outsized influence would produce a more holistic assessment.
Or Just Admit What It Is
There is an alternative to reform: honesty. Just admit that the Ballon d’Or is not, and never really was, a rigorous assessment of the world’s best footballer. It’s a popularity contest with a veneer of authority. An annual argument starter. A media event that generates content and conversation, which is its actual purpose.
There’s nothing wrong with that. Awards ceremonies across every industry are, at their core, entertainment products that reward certain achievements while ignoring others based on criteria that are as much about marketing as merit. The Oscars don’t identify the best film. The Grammys don’t identify the best album. And the Ballon d’Or doesn’t identify the best footballer.
The problem is pretending otherwise. The award’s prestige depends on the belief that it means something definitive. And in the post-Messi-Ronaldo era, when the results are contested, the methodology is questioned, and the voting patterns are scrutinised, that belief is eroding fast.
The Bottom Line
The Ballon d’Or hasn’t lost its meaning entirely. It still generates attention, debate, and engagement — which, for an award, is arguably the point. But the gap between what the award claims to be (the definitive recognition of the world’s best footballer) and what it actually is (a flawed, narrative-driven vote by an inconsistent panel) has never been wider.
In the Messi-Ronaldo era, the answer was usually obvious enough that the process didn’t matter. Now the process matters. And the process isn’t good enough.
Fix it, or watch it become football’s equivalent of a participation trophy — something everyone gets a ceremony for but nobody truly respects. The sport deserves a better way to celebrate its best. Whether the Ballon d’Or can become that, or whether it’s already too far gone, is the question that the next few years will answer.