Before you downvote me, I’m not saying someone deserves it or someone doesn’t. If you value national team football as more important, Messi deserves it. Club football, Haaland deserves it. If you value many trophies, plus incredible consistency throughout the season, then Rodri deserves it. It’s completely subjective.
There has been tons of confusion about these awards and rankings. But if we actually see these as something to appeal to large masses of casual fans, every winner and nominee make completely perfect sense. Casual fans don’t watch every game of every top league, they don’t watch every UCL game. WC is more appealing to the average fan, because it’s one month, the structure is easy, it’s exciting and easy to follow. Everyone has watched Argentina lift the trophy, France reach the final, Croatia and Morocco with surprise semi-final appearences. But not as many people have watched all 38 EPL or La Liga games for example.
In this way, it makes perfect sense that Martinez is awarded the best goalkeeper award. Casual fans don’t care about Ter Stegen keeping tons of clean sheets in La Liga, Courtois or Onana bossing it in the UCL or Alisson being amazing every weekend. They haven’t watched all those games, but they all have watched Martinez saving important penalties to lead Argentina to win the WC.
Same goes for Alvarez finishing in the 7th place. This season he is obviously world class, but last season he was a bench player, he didn’t start a single UCL game after the group stages, despite no injuries. In the WC he was amazing though, and millions of people watched him being amazing, so that’s all that matters. Similarly with Messi. The large masses watched 100% of his amazing performances that made him deserve the Ballon d’Or, whereas they didn’t watch most of the games that made Haaland deserve it. The millions of casual fans can appreciate easier an incredible quick dribbler and crazy good finisher like Mbappe, than a defensive midfielder like Rodri. That’s why Mbappe finished higher. DMs like him, Busquets and Casemiro are always underrated, because it’s more difficult for the average viewer to comprehend their importance, compared to an attacker.
So, I think all of these awards and rankings are 100% deserved, if you see them as a worldwide promotion of the sport. It has always been like that (see 2002).
Ballon d’Or has only become that prestigious in the last decade or so, in the 90s people barely cared about it.
At the end of the day is just a huge marketing campaign and yes, it’s in order to engage millions of fan with it and the sport in general. Do you think having as guests the streamer Speed or the Brazilian Tiktok dude are also to give recognition to players? Do you think Drogba and Beckham presenting the awards are for the players too? Please.
France Football just wants to make its award as big of a deal as possible, in order to maximize its profits. If there was a completely objective way to compare players (something like match ratings, but perfected), the majority of fans wouldn’t care about this, because there would barely be an controversy.
Was Martinez the best goalkeeper in the world last season? Absolutely not, but who cares, billions of people saw him save penalties in a WC quarterfinal and final. Was Jorghinho the 3rd best player in the world in 2021? Of course not, but casuals saw him winning both Euros and UCL, on teams that lacked star players. He wasn’t even Chelsea’s best midfielder that year. Was Ronaldo Nazario the best player in the whole 2002 calendar year? Again, not, but billions saw him winning the WC for Brazil, so nobody cared about him not doing anything before or after the competition. It has always been the same. Casuals only care for big moments and huge trophies and that’s only what matters for this award. Someone like Kane or Ter Stegen could be world class week in week out, but at the end of the day they’ll finish much lower than Man City’s bench player, Alvarez.
It has always been like that and it always will be. It has nothing to do with “recognition”, it’s only ever been about keeping the casuals happy.