The Ballon d'Or - another of FIFA's bizarre ideas

The 23-man shortlist for FIFA’s top individual prize – the Ballon d’Or has been revealed and surprise, surprise more than 50 per cent play for Barcelona and Real Madrid.



This is written with nothing but genuine admiration for the two dominant clubs in world football over the past 12 months. Barcelona won the Champions League, Spanish title and European Super Cup; while Real have had played out some pretty epic 90-minutes with their arch rivals and notably won the Copa del Rey – before Sergio Ramos dropped it.



But what does this award really mean? To begin with the timing is curious. Obviously end of year awards make sense but football is a game which begins annually in September and finishes in the summer – but seemingly FIFA don’t like doing things which would make sense.



Goal line technology anyone?



Yes, I appreciate some leagues – notably the Brazilian and Russian – run with the Gregorian calendar, but if we look at the Class of 2011 nominees, only one, Neymar, regularly has an extended break over Christmas and New Year – something which will surely soon end when he makes his inevitable, and highly anticipated move to Europe.



So let us judge the best player from the second half of last season and the first half of this – it’s a bizarre concept! It’s the equivalent of taking half the lap times from one race, adding them to half the lap times of another - results from two different circuits, in two different driving conditions, often in two different continents to devise one result.



Often major international competitions produce the winner of this prize – but this doesn’t look like happening in 2011 when inspecting the possible candidates.



We still need a winner though - despite the stupid timing of this award; despite Sepp Blatter being as easy to predict as a roulette wheel – one player must still comes out on top.



But funnily enough despite all these oddities it is fairly obvious who will take the gong. Like Sebastian Vettel in Formula 1, however you splice up games, appearances, assists or trophies – Lionel Messi is the best.

P.S. Why has Arsene Wenger been nominated as manager of the year? They hardly won a game after losing to Birmingham City - who were subsequently relegated - in the Carling Cup Final last season.