Lionel Messi will win his eighth Ballon d’Or

This year, for the first time, the main individual award in world football will be in the hands of a player who no longer plays in one of the European leagues. The eighth Ballon d’Or for Lionel Messi also provided a new timing for determining its winner. Since the prize is now awarded in mid-autumn, the athlete’s achievements are also assessed at the end of the previous year. And it was the magical world championship for the great Argentinean in Qatar.

The Spanish publication Diario Sport revealed the main voting results for the main individual award in world football – the Golden Ball. The award ceremony will take place on October 30 in Paris. According to Diario SportFor women, the prize will go to Spaniard Aitana Bonmati, the leader of the Spanish national team, which won the World Cup in the summer, which was hosted by Australia and New Zealand, and for men, the prize will go to the living legend of world football, Lionel Messi. The information that the Argentinean will become the winner of the competition was confirmed by a number of media resources, such as Bola.

For Lionel Messi, the current Ballon d’Or will be the eighth in his career: he won the previous ones in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2019 And 2021. He has no equal in this sense; his closest pursuer, the Portuguese Cristiano Ronaldo, has five trophies. Meanwhile, Messi’s October Ballon d’Or will still stand out in the already very long list he has received. And not even so much because of the advanced age of the Argentinean, who turned 36 in June.

The Ballon d’Or, whose winner is determined annually by a vote conducted by France Football, has existed since 1956. And throughout the almost seventy-year history of the competition, the prize has invariably ended up in the hands of a football player playing in one of the European leagues.

Lionel Messi will be the first to pick up the Ballon d’Or while playing on another continent.

He finished last season in the French PSG, but in the summer made an unexpected transition to the American Inter Miami.

The second interesting nuance is the greater role of timing in determining the laureate than ever before. Formally, the “Golden Ball” is an award based on the results of the next year. In 2023, Lionel Messi played well. This is especially true for its “American” part. Finding himself at Inter Miami, Messi immediately made a real splash.

He scored 11 goals in 13 matches for his new club, and the Argentinean team turned from an outsider into almost a local giant, finally achieving tournament success – in the League Cup.

But North American football, no matter how you look at it, is no match for European football in terms of level and media coverage. But Lionel Messi did not win any truly high-profile titles this year: PSG with him, for example, failed in the usual style in the Champions League, withdrawing from the race already in the starting round of the play-offs. It is unlikely that if only these facts were taken into account, Messi would be the favorite in a dispute with such players as, say, Manchester City super-scorer Erling Haaland or his former Paris teammate Kylian Mbappe.

But there is an important detail related to the date of the Ballon d’Or. Previously, it took place in winter, that is, really after the end of the year. This decade, the organizers moved the ceremony – and therefore the summing up of the voting results – to the fall. In fact, as the same Diario Sport emphasizes, respondents are already obliged to take into account what happened to the contenders for the trophy at the end of the year that preceded the “reporting one”.

In the case of last year’s winner – French forward Karim Benzema – this detail did not matter. “Golden Ball” in October 2022 Benzema earned primarily with his spring exploits in the Champions League, carrying Real to the title. But in the case of Lionel Messi, its significance is colossal.

The fact is that after the personal triumph of Karim Benzema – in November-December 2022 – the World Championships in Qatar, as an exception, postponed by the International Football Federation (FIFA) from the summer to at least a relatively cool period by the standards of the host country. And at the Qatari championship, Messi played not just brilliantly, but magically. He led his team to the most valuable title in football, scoring seven goals in seven matches, including two in the final, in which the Argentines defeated the French in a penalty shootout. And the undisputed status of the best player of the tournament, apparently, was almost doomed to be converted into the Golden Ball.

Alexey Dospehov