I’ve seen a lot of people online saying Messi’s win was a robbery, and that Haaland deserved to win.
While I 100% get those sentiments, I have some thoughts on why Haaland didn’t deserve to win.
It’s difficult to remember a time before the Ballon d’Or was dominated by Messi and Ronaldo - in fact, a lot of football fans today might not have even been born before their reign began.
Historically, if you look at who won the Ballon d’Or over the years, it’s almost always the player who was the most entertaining to watch that year. Since the Messi-Ronaldo dominance, this seems to have changed into who scored the most goals, and I just don’t think football is as simple as that.
Consider this (and be honest with yourself about it): whose highlights are you more likely to watch from 2022-23, Messi’s or Haaland’s?
As much of a goal scoring machine as Haaland is, I don’t find myself watching his highlights back, whereas I’ve already watched Messi’s World Cup highlights a few times, because he’s just that mesmerising.
In case you’re thinking “here we go, another deluded Messi super fan”, I’m going to throw a spanner in the works. In my personal opinion, for the reasons stated above, I would actually have Kevin De Bruyne and Kylian Mbappe ahead of Haaland too.
In my opinion, it shouldn’t just be about who scored the most goals, nor who won the most trophies - it should be about who brought the most magic to the game. Who made you gasp in awe, cheer with excitement, get up off your seat.
If I was Haaland right now, would I feel robbed? Almost certainly. But can I honestly say that he brings the same romance to the game as Messi, Ronaldo, Kaka, Ronaldinho, etc? Well, no.
Those are just my thoughts, but I wanted to express them.
Edit: words
The issue comes from so many people justifying Messi winning Balon D’Or in the past by exactly these achievements you mentioned.
He scored 90 goals in a season.
Messi won a treble
Messi won the Copa America
Messi won the World Cup
It feels like every achievement he has needs to be celebrated by a Balon D’Or. we already have him the international trophy one. This one is bad but if you want to argue they always go to World Cup winners look at 2010 which in my opinion was worse.
Xavi won the World Cup, treble and was captain yet still beat by Messi.
Journalist are going to vote for who they want to vote but should really come up with a scoring system otherwise it’s all subjective.
These situations just aren’t analogous and I am bored of people pretending that they are. There’s a reason why people say ‘Xavi/Iniesta’ should have won, and it’s because that Spain side were in no way elevated by a single individual the same way that Argentina were. Both Xavi and Iniesta were more or less equally pivotal in terms of controlling the midfield. Villa top-scored. The defence was a very solid unit comprised of unambiguously world-class players. Just like Germany in 2014 - Neuer outstanding in goal, Muller leading scorer but four of his five in the Group Stage.
The point is that in both 2010 and 2014 you had two perfectly-calibrated teams full of world-class players where it was very difficult to identify an individual whose performances across the tournament were clearly dominant relative to their team-mates.
This isn’t true of Argentina. Sure, Martinez had some *decisive* moments. Sure, Alvarez chipped in with some goals. Sure, Di Maria had a great final. But Messi was obviously the top performer. In the Mexico game, they were devoid of ideas until he smashed one in from a 0.04xG chance from 25 yards. In the Australia game, he scored a beautiful opening goal through a crowd of players. In the Netherlands game, he got the assist of the tournament and was at the heart of everything Argentina created. Same in the Croatia game, with another exceptional assist. Then he scored a brace in the final and led the match for key passes and progressive passes. Di Maria had one goal and one assist in the whole damn tournament.
It’s just embarrassing to argue that all Messi did in the tournament was score some penalties. You do realise that in today’s age you can not only watch full matches live, but also go back and rewatch them to correct yourself of these delusions? Make the pro-Haaland case if you want; it’s a pretty damn strong one! But only people with room temperature IQs think that ‘he only scored 4 penalties, there were better players on his side’ is a defensible position.