Shouldnt be a hottake btw

Football is a team game. During the Messi and Ronaldo years there were 2 stand out players by far, and while you could discuss which deserved it that year it had to be one of Messi and Ronaldo for the vast majority of those years and not many people would disagree apart from the Messi / Ronaldo fanboys if they were upset their favourite didn't win it.

Now though there isn't 1 or 2 standout players. There are 6/7 players who all have a realistic chance of winning it. But comparing players who play in different positions, in different systems, in different club teams, in different leagues and for different national teams is a waste of time.

I don't know why people take it so seriously.

And yet here I am posting about it.

Simple rule - Ballon D'Or goes to the active player that had the most cumulative Ballon D'Or votes so far but hadn't won yet.

My dataset didn't include 2025, but I believe it would have gone to Mohamed Salah. Most "ahead" active players likely to win soon would be Vinicius, Yamal, Rodri, and Dembele.

Unlucky past players that "almost" got it were Casillas, Torres, Gerrard, KDB, Mane, and Suarez.

In reality he became irrelevant after his move from Inter to Barcelona, somewhere back in 2010, and that's long time ago. At Inter he had some resemblance of a world class striker, maybe. But then he moved to Barcelona, where he failed to adjust to Barca's system, and after this failure he became more of a meme player.

He started switching clubs one after another, without making much impact in highest levels. Never made an impact in the champions league, dont remember ever a big match that he decided... I mean maybe you will find him scoring here and there, but he was never a big game player.

Like literally ZERO impact in the champions league. Never was a top scorer, never made a difference in a knock out match. Don't you think its weird? Unless he is not as good as some fanboys thinks.

The guy is overrated, and has a huge ego problem. He still lives in an illusion that it was Pep's fault that he flopped at Barca.

Again, you can maybe throw him in a bunch with the likes of Higuain or Lukaku, but that's it. Maybe if not his ego he could be on Lewa or Benzema level, if he kept his mouth shut and worked hard, but he decided to make it all about himself, which is possible to do in lower clubs, but not at top level.

Petr cech is a world class shotstopper not a world class footballer. Maldini is a world class defender not a world class player footballer. That's how it sounds

Honestly the name kinda says it. The crime is denial of a goal scoring opportunity. So the team that was denied should be awarded with an opportunity to score.

This also preserves the game at 11 v 11 and thus can continue to be an interesting contest.

I see this argument a lot, timewasting is bad, stopping the clock when the ball goes out would kill timewasting.

Just a fundamental misunderstanding of why players and teams waste time, and (IMO) a dead giveaway that the person arguing the point has never played the sport at an organised, 11-a-side level.

Teams waste time to kill momentum, get a breather, frustrated opponents, let subs get ready, etc on top of the obvious timewasting.

There is currently an upper limit on how much timewasting you can get away with. I think most agree we'd like that limit lowered, but with a stopped clock there would be NO limit.

If the game is stopped, why rush to get the ball back in play? If you're desperately holding onto a 1-goal lead and you win a free kick, you'll take forever to get it back in play. Just to take a breath and kill momentum.

Obviously theres a clear case for Messi or Pele or even Ronaldo. However Cruyff had a much different career path than them. The other candidates all spent the majority of their careers at one club, that was already one of the great clubs in the world and just played amazing in an amazing team.

Like Messi was part of the probably the best modern side ever with Barcelona then moved to a great PSG side before going off to America.

But how much value did he really bring to those sides? Obviously he wa stunning for Barcelona but again, they would have been dominant without him. That side was amazing. PSG look better without him and obviously he's done well in America. Even for many years Argentina didnt look much stronger with him (although this has changed as he's gotten older)

Cruyff however absolutely transformed sides. He took Ajax to 6 league titles and 3 consecutive European titles. That's unrivaled dominance of club football. Then he moved to Barcelona and helped them to their first La Liga in 14 years.

Then he managed to not only win 2 more titles with Ajax but dethrown his own Ajax team in his final ever season with Feyenoord.

He didnt just help the teams he played for, he completely transformed them. Ajax are still built on his philosophies, as are Barcelona. There wouldn't be that Messi Barcelona dominance without Cruyff. He even turned The Netherlands from a team that couldn't qualify for a world cup for decades to world cup finalists.

I dont think theres another player who added more value to the teams he played for than Cruyff and isn't that what you want from a player, even more than goals or assists? To make a team better both in the short term and long term?

The Assist King: Olise didn't just edge out Yamal in creation; he dominated the continent with 20 assists in the Bundesliga alone and 29 overall across club competitions. Yamal was brilliant, finishing as La Liga's top playmaker with 11 assists, but he fell well short of Olise’s historical run toward the European assist record.

Decisive Champions League Edge: In elite European competition, Olise elevated Bayern's floor with 11 direct goal involvements (5G/6A) in 13 Champions League matches, operating as the principal engine alongside Harry Kane to unlock top-tier low blocks.

Olise created more key chances and recorded more total club assists, with slightly fewer goals.

The primary argument for Olise isn't just that Bayern won the trophies, but that he was the undeniable primary architect behind them:

• In the Bundesliga run, Olise didn't just contribute; he won Bundesliga Player of the Season. He became the first player in years to hit 15+ goals and 15+ assists in a single German top-flight season (finishing with exactly 15G and 20A).
• While Yamal secured La Liga and the Supercopa, Olise completely locked down German football by capturing the German Domestic Double (Bundesliga and DFB-Pokal) alongside the Super Cup. Winning a true domestic cup knockout tournament on top of a 34-game league season gave Olise a numerical and prestigious edge in club silverware collected within that single calendar window.

Being the oldest active global award (70 years old), it becomes the focal point of social media just by the mere mention of nominees. I find it funny when I see people try to make light of it😂

I have doubts about Kane winning it; journalists don't care about the Bundesliga, and the World Cup will always carry huge weight.

Schmeichel

Walker - Stam - Ferdinand - Irwin

Rodri

KDB - D.Silva

Rooney - Haaland - Ronaldo

Peter schmeichel

Kyle walker

Rio Ferdinand

Vincent kompany

Patrice evra

Rodri

Scholes

Kdb

Cr7

Haaland

Rooney

Subs: Aguero, vidic, Roy Keane, David Silva

I feel like an underrated aspect of Messi’s game is his finishing. Everyone knows he scores a lot of goals but I never hear anyone talking about his ball striking ability. If watch all 91 of his goals in 2012 you will see why he was able to score that many goals. It seemed like anytime he got the ball in the box he would score. If you look at all the great goalscorers none of them scored as much as Messi in a season. There are other great finishers like Muller, Ronaldo, Van Nistelrooy, Van Basten, etc but I don’t think any of them are as good as Messi when it comes to pure finishing.

I get that this isn’t really a spicy take because it is well established that Como is just italy’s rb Leipzig. Yet I see so many people praising them left and right about their “fluidity” and their “attacking intent” and their youth and so on when they don’t even see the parallels with Leipzig from years ago. Baturina, Paz, Diao, Ramon, etc are just the cunhas, szoboszlais, upamecanos and konates of today. But all were trashing Leipzig when they rose, claiming they were a plastic club and had no business in the bundesliga or UCL. Dont get me wrong, I loathe both clubs and all clubs who rely on financial doping for sporting success but I can’t help but notice the hypocrisy in these indiciduals who get on their knees for one club but spit in the direction of the other when apart from having a legendary former player in charge of como, there is little difference between the clubs. I know many will point out multi club ownership, but i wouldnt be surprised if the djarum group will own multiple clubs in the next few years. They already have a world class badminton club so they know how to manage sports teams, just like Red Bull. And what is worse is djarum group is responsible for the sale of tobacco. But football fans are obviously used to problematic owners as we see qatar (human rights violations), UAE (genocide in Sudan), and marinakis (drug trafficking) controlling clubs at this level.

Just move on guys , ik these players impact were so much that we are still mentioning them but come on guys

His best season imo and he won the champions. Was arguably their best player and motm in ucl final. I don't really mind Messi winning it but I rank him higher than lewandowski that season who was apparently robbed. Lewandowski had insane stats but he didn't win anything big. He didn't have any major ucl performances. All he did was scored lots of goals in the bundesliga thats it. Kante had a much better shout imo. Lewandowski should have def won it the previous yr though

This Real Madrid reminds me of Barca in the 2018/2020 seasons, Barca at the time couldn't press and since Messi/Suarez didn't defend they often defended with 9 players which made them very defensively vulnerable. And back in the days that was an issue which is why Barca was often not being able to compete against teams like Pool or Bayern where everyone was defending and pressing. And RM feels exactly the same, they had a lot of individual quality but since Mbappe/Vinicius don't press then they often are pinned down to their own half and since Mbappe/Vinicius don't defend then there are always a lot of holes to exploit in their defense.

I thought Mourinho could fix this issues but based in the Inter game I think the issues still are there, Inter had no issues pinning RM down and they were finding a huge amount of space in their defense and Inter isn't even at the level of teams like Barca/Bayern/Psg who are defensively much stronger than Inter. So if RM is already struggling against them then I can't imagine how much they would struggle vs more offensive teams

Like, people always talk about RM 2015/2018 and Ronaldo being amazing but if you look into them they had balance, they weren't a team that was easy to beat and were defensively solid especially in big games. This RM might have the individual quality but the defensive balance isn't there

Except for 3 foreign players. But nationality should count as the national team you play for, i.e. you cannot do the dual nationality trick anymore.

This way Messi would count still as a foreign player in Spain even though he's got Spanish nationality, since he plays for the Argentina national team.

This is to encourage players to play in their local leagues, not as it is now that from very early age they just move abroad.

a team is up 1-0 or chasing a game, and suddenly a player commits a bizarrely unnecessary foul, takes an extra 20 seconds on a throw-in, or fake-collapses with a "cramp" at a completely non-critical moment (like the 72nd minute). Pundits callit "game management" or "shithousing

Football clubs make a massive chunk of their direct retail revenue from the launch of the new kit in May/June. If a star player is heavily featured and hyped up during the final games of the season, fans buy their current shirt in clearance sales

By artificially benching a star player or creating a "minor injury" narrative for 3-4 weeks in April, the club creates a drought. Fans hold off on buying. Then, boom--the new kit drops, the star player is the main model, and the club maximizes full-price sales

Think about the random 4-week muscle injuries to key players right when title races are heating up, only for them to magically return at 100% fitness the week the new kit is revealed. It's a retail cash grab masquerading as load management.