Personally I feel it’s winners are completely decided on the basis of hype and fan following not the actual individual player assessments. What do you guys think?
No it’s one of the worst, it’s a closed door glorified political popularity contest and nothing more
I can’t take these awards seriously, as long as there aren’t any clear and at least somehow objective criteria on how the ranking works. Everything is 100% subjective.
Personally I watch A LOT of games, and I prefer watching club football than national, so I’d always value UCL, EPL or La Liga performances over WC, Euros or Copa America. Some other people are the exact opposite, especially a large portion of more casual fans. It’s all a matter of preference, there’s not right or wrong.
Criteria are also nonexistent. Are goals and assists all that matter? Then goalkeepers, defenders and midfielders are always gonna be screwed. Are trophies the most important? Then Varane in 2018 should be the clearest Ballon d’Or winner of all time. Are individual performances? Again it’s difficult to know, since someone could seriously outperform all his teammates and opponents, but fail to win anything. 2011-2013 Gareth Bale comes to mind, his performances were world class, but he was never in the conversation for the award because… Spurs.
Declaring one player to be “The best” is impossible, there are so many different roles on a soccer pitch and so many different skills required.