The Golden Ball has for years been the most prestigious individual award a footballer can win during his career.
The list of winners includes the biggest names in the history of football since 1956 which was the first edition of this award and where the winner was the Englishman Stanley Mathews, until today where the 10-year dominance of the Ronaldo-Messi duo was broken last year by Croat Luka Modric.
Regarding this year's award, on Monday the list of 30 contending footballers was published to win the Golden Ball 2019 award. Often in recent years it has been easy to predict the winner, but this season the contenders seem to have more chances balanced. The award is theoretically expected to be discussed by Virgil van Dijk, Champions League winner with Liverpool and last season's Golden Shoe Lionel Messi who also managed to win the Spanish league with Barcelona.
Cristiano Ronaldo is another favorite, but with fewer chances. The Portuguese played his first season in Serie A with the jersey of Juventus and managed to win this competition by scoring 21 goals for his team. He also managed to triumph with Portugal in the Nations League, but early elimination from the Champions League significantly reduced his chances of winning the Golden Ball.
In August, van Dijk was voted UEFA Footballer of the Year, while Messi won the FIFPro Best Award from FIFA. Both of these players are expected to be on the podium of the Golden Ball accompanied by Ronaldo as it happened in the aforementioned awards.
Like Van Dijk, Messi and Ronaldo, the rest of the players who are part of the list of nominations play in Europe and if we were to categorize them according to the championship where they play, the list would look like this:
- Premier League (England) - 15
- La Liga (Spain) - 7
- Serie A (Italy) - 3
- Ligue 1 (France) - 2
- Eredivisie (Netherlands) - 2
- Bundesliga (Germany) - 1
The following is the number of footballers nominated by the clubs where they play:
- Liverpool - 7
- Man. City. - 5
- Barcelona - 4
- Ajax - 2
- Juventus - 2
- PSG - 2
- Real Madrid - 2
- Tottenham - 2
- Arsenal - 1
- Atletico Madrid - 1
- Bayern Munich - 1
- Naples - 1
English Championship and Liverpool lead the respective rankings and it can be said that the performance of English clubs in the Champions League and especially Liverpool as the winner of this competition, is the main reason for the number of players they have in this list. Will this criterion also apply to determining the winner of the Golden Ball? This remains to be seen…
The full list of nominations "Ball of Art 2019" published by "France Football" can be seen below:
