The Irrelevance Of The Balon D'or

I think the Ballon D'or primarily just matters for future generations who didn't actually watch the players but can use the Ballon D'or as a way to figure out how good players were. So it is ultimately relevant for a player's legacy, but it's not all that relevant to present-day discussions amongst people who have actually watched the players play.

 

how is this relevant??? honest question

 

I suppose you didn't watch the video.

One of the key points that is made in it, is how there is a difference between an amazing player and a great player, one gauged on the basis of how well the players perform under duress, on the biggest stage.

 

But wouldn't that make certain players overrated or underrated? For example, TH14 should have won at least one, imho. Now people will look back and think that although he was a player of great consistency, his peak was never as good as someone like Shevchenko, which was simply not true.

Maybe they'll look back and think that Owen 2001 was a world-class season, when in fact Owen 2001 wouldn't make top 5 in many years.

Or they might think that Ronaldinho peak was in 2005, when I'd argue it was in 2006.

Suarez could potentially finish with not a single one, just like TH14, simply because he plays at the same time as CR7 and Messi, even though his level of performances has been very high.

It creates misunderstandings, I think.

 

Yeah, I think it does create that kind of misunderstanding. Of course, the Ballon D'or isn't the only data point people of later generations have about an era. There's also knowledge passed down by those were were able to watch the players play. Ideally that can correct some of the more egregious misunderstandings that might result from just looking at award voting. I still think it has an effect though. For instance, if Thierry Henry had won a Ballon D'or, I think he'd ultimately end up going down as one level above what he will go down as having not won the award.

 

The problem with this type of award is that sometimes it becomes too influenced by the collective success of the candidates. The collective and the individual can be separated if needed. Being a team sport, it is completely possible and acceptable that the most outstanding player not always will be part of the most successful side.
With the Messi-Cronaldo rivalry of the last 8 years or so, I feel that when Messi wins it its like "Well, Messi is the best in the world, nobody like him, probable the best ever, plus he won this and that, scored that many goals, blah blah". When they give it to Cronaldo is more like "Ronaldo deserves it this time, he has won this and that much, scored this many goals..." I think my point is clear.

 

The so-called criteria fluctuate every year. One day it's who scores the most goals in a season, then who scores the most goals in the calendar year, then trophies won, then the eye test for the best player. Always different. Let's also not forget the voting extension which won Cristiano the Ballon D'Or during WC qualifiers. It's all rigged.

 

I think, to some extent, this is right. But I think you give the voters a bit too little credit. I don't think the criteria fluctuate, as much as that the determinative factor is naturally different each time because the most important accomplishments players have every year are different. There are obviously tons of factors that go into Ballon D'or voting. Voters think about team success, individual production, the eye test, etc. One year you might vote for a player because he was the best player on teams that won tons of trophies. The next year, you might vote for a player because he had record-breaking goal-scoring. That doesn't mean that team success didn't matter in the second year or that goal-scoring didn't matter in the first year. It just means that the most important accomplishment in each year was different. And we should expect that to be true.

For instance, let's take the 2012 Ballon D'or and the 2015 Ballon D'or. In 2012, Messi scored 91 goals. That is a tremendous accomplishment. On the other hand, no top individual player had tremendous team success. Spain won the Euros, but its best players in the tournament were on a Barcelona team that only won the Copa Del Rey (though they did also have a huge lead in the 2012-2013 La Liga at the time), so their overall team success that year wasn't entirely historic. Real Madrid had only won La Liga, which was nice, but was not some historically successful season. Meanwhile, the Champions League winning team--Chelsea--really didn't have any top individual player and had been not very good in the league. No top player accomplished team success that was nearly as impressive as Messi's goalscoring haul. So Messi won the award. Now let's take the 2015 Ballon D'or. In contrast to 2012, there was a team that had tremendous team success: Barcelona won the treble. Meanwhile, Ronaldo scored the most goals, with 57 goals in the 2015 calendar year (compared to 52 for Messi). That is a ton of goals, of course, but it's perfectly reasonable to say that winning the treble is a more impressive accomplishment than scoring 57 goals rather than 52 goals. The fact that winning the treble is more impressive than scoring 57 goals doesn't mean that scoring 91 goals can't be more impressive than winning La Liga. This isn't an example of the criteria fluctuating. Scoring and team accomplishments always both matter. It's just that the award tends to go to whichever top player had the most impressive accomplishment. And in different years, the most impressive accomplishment from a top player might be team success one year and goalscoring the other.

 

Can you please explain how Ronaldo winning La Liga with real Madrid in 11/12 against arguably the greatest club side in history,scoring the goal in the nou camp that effectively won the la Liga title is not a "historic achievement"?
Anyone can win a la Liga title just ask vermaelen who won the treble playing only 20 games we are not talking about that . We are talking about a player (ie c.Ronaldo) who scored 46 league goals in 11/12 hattricks against seville, atletico Madrid,malaga scored against EVERY single team in la Liga and to top it all of he scored the winning goal against Barcelona on their home ground in easily the biggest game anywhere in Europe(during 11/12)

el classico during the mourinho era was literally the biggest show on earth hundreds of millions of viewers possibly only wc finals attract more and when the eyes of the world was watching Ronaldo turned up and Messi was a non factor.

you also have to factor in Ronaldo having a very good euro 2012,Messi never had any international comps to play during 2012 but this does not mean that we have to discount that Ronaldo had a very good tournament during the euros .

now look scoring 91 goals is an absolutely phenomenal feat that I'm pretty sure will never be repeated but how about Gerd muller scoring 86 goals in 1972 with no penalties in many less games + won bundesliga and euro's( and was top scorer)compared to Messi who played at least 15 more games and took 14 more penalties and only won the copa del rey.
Gerd muller doesn't win the ballon D'or 72 and in fact finishes joint second with netzer behind der kaiser but you think that Messi with a insignificant copa del rey title(compared to a league title and euro) deserved to win the ballon D'or?

 

I agree with you 100% in what you stated about Cr7s season in the 11/12 season, and Cr7 actually had a better case for Balon D'or than Messi ALL THINGS considered.
However, Messi won the ballon d'or because he broke the record for goals that year, and when you look at Cr7s ballon d'or in 2013, the same argument could be used to make a case for Ribery. Because for that year, Ribery surely had better performances than Cr7 but Cr7 scored more goals thus winning the award. I mean lets be honest, Ribery had better performances and won more trophies than Ronaldo

 

Ribery won more trophies definitely(5 in a year is a historic achievement only surpassed by guardiola's Barcelona in 2009)but better performances is a whole different thing.

Bayern munich's trophy haul in 2013 was more a result of a team effort than that of one spectacular individual putting on a 1 man show,Ronaldo did not win anything correct,but he still was spectacular player(ie a goal machine+entertainer).I'm not going to bore you with goal and skill comps from his 12/13 season if you want to see what kind of technical level Ronaldo was at there are plenty of videos on YouTube,but I rather show you his more underrated qualities(ie playmaking)during the 12/13 season.
As you can see below he was still heavily involved in the build up play/ in the creation of a shitload of goals in addition to scoring 50+ himself.

just check these out
passing from his 2012/13 season(long balls, through balls,trick/skillfull passes, crosses,assists and pre assists)

from 0:20-2:24


0:20-2:40


0:20-1:45

since when did peak c.Ronaldo need to win trophies to be better than any version of ribery?


Let's just go over his 2013 ballon dor case:
69 goals +15 assists in 59 games in the 2013 calendar year

Scored 55 goals in 55 games in the 2012/13 season(all comps)including 34 goals in 34 games in the league

Now let's break down his 12/13 la liga goal tally before certain posters become erratic and start saying he scored a gazillion goals against bottom feeders.
7 goals + 2 assists in 6 games vs top 5 teams
2 goals vs Barcelona
1 goal+1 assist vs atletico Madrid
2 goals+ 1 assist vs valencia
2 goals vs real sociedad
( he missed the away fixtures against real sociedad and atletico completely through injury)
goals vs top 5 account for 21% of his goal tally

15 goals(and 6 assists) vs top 10 teams
Goals vs top 10 teams account for 44% of his goal tally

And against the bottom 4 he scored 10 goals=29% of his goal tally
http://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/cristiano-ronaldo/leistungsdaten/spieler/8198/plus/0?saison=2012
Compare this to goat/legendary epl season by suarez who scored 31 league goals
0 goals vs top 4 teams=0% of his tally
15 goals vs bottom 4 teams=48% of his tally



C. Ronaldo also top scored in the 12/13 cl with 12 goals in 12 games (6 in the group stage and 6 in the knockout stage )
a record 15 cl goals in the 2013 calendar year (breaking messi's record of 13 cl goals in the 2012 calendar year)

scored in the opener in the copa del rey final against atletico Madrid, played quite a great game and was red carded in extra time. real Madrid lost the final 2-1

singlehandedly dragged Portugal to the wc in a very high pressure game vs Sweden and scored all four goals in a 4-2 aggregate win

Imo during 2013 c.Ronaldo was a spectacular and complete player probably the last year we saw him at his absolute peak level. Messi was also quite brilliant he won la liga thanks to his goal exploits in the second half of the 2012 calendar year and was also a top 2 player in the first half of 2013.
Ribery was great and played a HUGE role in winning 5 titles but he was not a standout player imo.
you could not look at that Bayern squad in 12/13 and say that ribery was unarguably their best player like Messi with Barcelona,Ronaldo with Madrid,robben with Bayern(13/14 and 14/15) kaka with Milan(05-09) even ibrahimovic with psg(12-16)

You just look have to look at how bayern munich destroyed Barcelona in 2013 largely without the help of ribery who was only involved in 2 of the 7 goals bayern munich scored (he had one direct assist and also a helping hand on piques own goal)
robben and muller ochestrated the show over the both legs.
If 2013 bayern munich can literally annihilate an all time great club side 7-0 in a cl sf largely without the help of ribery than that tells you all you need to know

Note:Another thing I forgot to mention ribery was nowhere near as impressive in the second half of the 2013 calendar year at least compared to his 12/13 season

 

actually, i believe that 12/13 was Cr7s last legitimate season as a player who would dribble on a number of occassions and would be constantly involved in the game compared to the Ronaldo we have seen for the last 3 or 4 seasons. HOWEVER, when I am referring to Ribery, I am not considering only his champions league performances, but his performances throughout all competitions. I am 100% sure that Ribery statistically created more chances for his team than Cr7.
IN ADDITION, lets not forget that Ronaldo and Ribery have different standards. The standards of Ronaldo and Messi are much higher than everyone else's. So if Cr7 has a 7/10, that is a 10/10 season for practically every other player. So understand, that I am also taking that into consideration.

IMO, as good as Ribery played in 12/13, I take Robben over Ribery every time. 1st of all, i think Robben is just more of a constant threat than Ribery and contrary to popular belief, I also believe that Robben was probably the next best player in 12/13 season after Messi and Ronaldo. But thats just my opinion.

 

No, the Ballon d'Or has never been perfect. In the initial years it had some strange eligibility rules (e.g. Matthews in 1957) and during the first 20 years it was practically made impossible to win the Ballon d'Or twice in a row. Then in the mid to late 60s lobbyists, companies and (sport) politicians started to get involved, most notoriously mr. Dassler (source: e.g. Andrew Jennings). Also the captain of Tuvalu (no disrespect) can cast a vote.

The media companies and sponsors play a role to make or break those events and have - in fact - advocated the merger of both awards (world player of the year and ballon d'or). Real Madrid with 577 million euros in revenues is just a small ant compared to the 33.7 billion of NewsCorp (Murdoch - football is still regarded as 'critical' for their fortunes), 30.6 billion of Nike (although for the Americans soccer is just one of their branches), the 14.5 billion of Adidas. Just to put things in perspective.

Marcotti:

http://www.espnfc.com/blog/marcotti...-footballs-superclubs-shows-no-sign-of-ending

Indeed, the merged Ballon d'Or has become part of the storyline with familiar characters. It has never been entirely perfect though.


Funnily, some seem to think 2009-10 was part of CR7 his peak level as an individual (dribbling, scoring, creativity). While back then he 'only' finished 6th in the rankings. In all other years since 2007 he's in the top 3. With him being such a familiar player to everyone, it aptly shows the limitations of the ranking.