Last Monday, Lionel Messi won the Ballon D’or, a yearly award given out by FIFA to the top player in world soccer. Each country’s national team’s head coach, captain, and one journalist gets a vote. These people are allowed to vote for three players; the first player gets five points, second gets three, and third gets one. But like all things FIFA, the process by which this award is voted on is an absolute joke.
However, in a rare instance of transparency within FIFA, we can actually look at the ballots cast by all participants. My main issue with the voting process is the obvious strategic voting, blatant homerism, and in some instances, straight-up ineptitude.
Let’s start with the strategic voting process. As captain of Argentina, Lionel Messi is eligible to vote for the award. He didn’t vote for himself, but he did vote for three of his Barcelona teammates in Luis Suarez, Neymar, and Andres Iniesta. He conveniently left off his main competitor, Cristiano Ronaldo, and put Neymar second, probably to give himself a better chance of winning. Ronaldo wasn’t much better, as he voted three of his Real Madrid teammates — Karim Benzema, James Rodriguez, and Gareth Bale — as his nominees. At least Neymar voted for Messi for first.
There are some prime examples of homerism on this list, and you can start with German National Team manager Joachim Low, who voted for Manuel Neuer, Thomas Muller, and Toni Kroos, all German players. Belgium captain Vincent Kompany voted fellow Belgians Eden Hazard and Kevin De Bruyne first and second respectively, although he did vote for Messi third. Peru captain Claudio Pizarro just straight up voted for his teammates at Bayern Munich. Cote d’Ivoire media member Khalil Adam voted for fellow countrymen Yaya Toure as his first-place vote.
But perhaps the best examples are the voters who submit ballots that make you question if they watched the sport at all in the past 12 months. Perhaps the weirdest ballot I found on the list is Fiji media member Sanju Prasad, who on his ballot ranked Toni Kroos third, Thomas Muller second, and Javier Mascherano first. Now I’m not saying Mascherano is not a good player. He certainly is. But ranking him above Messi and Ronaldo is totally ridiculous.
Other ballots that are totally out there include Tom Saintfiet of Togo, who thought Kevin De Bruyne was the best player of 2015, and the head coach of the Pakistan national team, who voted for Arjen Robben as the best player for some reason.
This whole process is ridiculous, and it could be made a lot simpler. The votes here should not count for the final winner. Instead these votes should be for who gets nominated for the top three. From there, an expert panel can pick who the winner is. Although the right winner was chosen, it’s worrying that this award is in the hands of voters who seem like they don’t really know what they’re doing.
Until FIFA fixes the voting process, I’m going to have to take the winner of the award with a healthy dose of skepticism.
You can find the entire list of who voted for who for the Ballon D’or here.
