The next edition of Golden Ball will modify the evaluation period (it will be per season and not per year) and will reduce the number of journalists who vote, announced this Friday France Soccerthe magazine that has awarded the best soccer player for seventy years.
After receiving criticism of opacity for the attribution of the 2021 Ballon d’Or to Leo Messi -the seventh in his career-, the publication detailed the reform for the 2021-2022 academic year, which will also affect the award for the best soccer player, awarded since 2018 and achieved in 2021 by the Spanish Alexia Putellas.
“The Ballon d’Or proposes a little cure for youth and touch-ups so that it is perfectly connected with the demands, with the particularities and the evolution of contemporary football,” said France Football.
The change in the evaluation period, by season (August-July) and not by calendar year, will lead, for example, to the Qatar World Cup in December 2022 not being included in the prize accounts for this year.
However, the exhibitions of the women’s European Championship, which is played in July, will be counted. The magazine also wants the criteria of “individual and decisive performance” to weigh more than collective results and fair play, which will become secondary.
Another criterion that gave points, that of the player’s history, is eliminated to make way for new names.
The voting journalists, one from each country, will be reduced from the current 170 to 100, and will represent the highest ranked nations in the FIFA rankings. In the women’s Ballon d’Or, only 50 specialized journalists will be able to vote.
The nomination criteria also change. The list will not only be drawn up by journalists from France Football and L’Équipe, but also by Ivorian Didier Drogba, Ballon d’Or ambassador, and the journalist whose vote was the most insightful. For the next men’s award, it will be the Vietnamese Truong Anh Ngoc (from The Thao & Van Hoa), who traced the top five finishers of the last Ballon d’Or in his vote. For the women’s, it will be the Czech Karolina Hlavackova (Ruik).
EFE
