The most prestigious individual award in world football is set to be awarded tonight, with 30 of the world’s best players in the shortlist to potentially win the 2023 Ballon d’Or.
The Ballon d’Or started back in 1956, with Sir Stanley Matthews winning the award in its inaugural year. In the years since, the award has gone to some of the greatest footballers to have lived with players such as Alfredo Di Stefano, Sir Bobby Charlton, Johan Cruyff, Zinedine Zidane winning the award and more recently being dominated by Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.
The award has changed in recent years, with the jurors now being instructed to vote from the period between August and July, to match the regular football season, rather than the old voting period of January to December. This came into effect in 2022, with Karim Benzema managing to win the vote and remain as the holder until tonight’s ceremony.
Due to this change in voting period, this year’s award will include the 2022 World Cup and this can be seen in the 30-player shortlist with multiple Argentinian players making the list following their tournament win, such as Emiliano Martinez, Julian Alvarez and Lautaro Martinez.
Messi the favourite
Lionel Messi also made it onto the shortlist and is the large favourite to take the award later on today, which would see his record of seven Ballons d’Or be extended to eight, three more than his closest rival Cristiano Ronaldo’s tally of five.
Messi won the World Cup and World Cup Golden Ball for being the tournament’s best player after scoring seven and assisting three on Argentina’s route to victory in Qatar, including scoring twice in the final against France. The Argentine also played a huge part in winning Ligue 1 with PSG, as he finished the season with 16 goals and 16 assists in the league as well as four goals and four assists in the UEFA Champions League in his final season at the Parc des Princes before moving to Inter Miami in the summer window.
Haaland’s time?
Erling Haaland is second favourite to win the award, and many feel like he should be taking the award home tonight after his breathtaking first season for Manchester City. Haaland broke the English Premier League goalscoring record with his phenomenal 36 goals in 35 games, finished as top scorer in the Champions League with 12 goals and ended the season with 52 goals and nine assists in 53 games across all competitions as Manchester City won an incredible treble.
The outsiders
Kylian Mbappe had a fantastic season for PSG and France with his eight goals in the Qatar World Cup making him the competitions top scorer. A hat-trick in the final made him the second player to do so alongside Geoff Hurst in 1966, but it wasn’t enough for France to win as Messi’s Argentina ended up victorious.
Nigerian forward Victor Osimhen finds himself in the shortlist as he finished as Serie A’s top scorer with 26 goals and also assisted four as he took Napoli to their first league title in 33 years. Teammate Khvicha Kvaratskhelia also made it to the shortlist with his 12 goals and 10 assists in the league winning campaign.
Elsewhere, players such as Vinicius Jr, Jude Bellingham, Antoine Griezmann and Kevin de Bruyne all made the shortlist for their endeavours for club and country.
However, as previously mentioned, with Messi captaining his country to an iconic World Cup title we fully expect that the Argentinian will claim victory over the Ballon d’Or yet again.
