Sport
Ballon d’Or 2021 hysteria proves how high Messi has set the bar
Eventually 30 Ballon d’Or 2021 nominations were whittled down to the final two, despite the illusion of secrecy, Lionel Messi was left next to Robert Lewandowski in the running and the seating plan. Could anybody really blame France Football for getting misty-eyed?
It was seen as a choice of validity, between one of two men who have dominated football’s most prestigious individual award for over a decade and the man who fully deserved to have his name up in lights.
There are a couple of caveats. The 2021 Ballon d’Or was the first for two years after the 2020 award was cancelled due to the pandemic, despite the elite end of football only being directly impacted for a couple of months. Lewandowski was almost universally believed to have been robbe when Messi landed his seventh trophy.
Bayern Munich had won the treble and the Pole had scored goals at a level only Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo had consistently hit, 34 in the Bundesliga and a further 15 in the Champions League. This year, there was a belief that Mo Salah’s form at Liverpool made him a shoo-in.
Beyond the tribalism which has become a frustrating byproduct of his rivalry with Ronaldo, Messi has never faced much of a backlash when picking up any of his previous six iterations of the trophy but, for his seventh, there has been genuine bewilderment and anger.
It shouldn’t really matter as football is a team game and that is the way it should stay. But even the Argentine spoke directly to Lewandowski and said he hoped he would be compensated for missing out 12 months earlier.
The criteria for the award, which is now independently run by France Football after a few years in conjunction with FIFA, are not widely known outside of the decision-making process, it is highly unlikely that nostalgia will come into it. The 2021 Ballon d’Or is likely to be Messi’s last time winning the trophy and, after leaving Barcelona in the summer, he has not been as dominant on a consistent basis as in previous years. Indeed, voters have been criticised for a lack of objectivity.
The answer to the opening question though is yes. If they had become nostalgic, it would have been a problem but to suggest that is what has happened is to feed into a problem with the wider Messi discourse.
Ultimately, as a footballing collective, we are bored. The levels Messi has set for himself are so high that he has to keep going just to get the same recognition. When a footballer with a lesser reputation scores a goal or plays a pass of high quality, the response is often to say that if Messi had done it, it would never be off the TV. This has become a tired, and painfully untrue, cliché.
Messi has scored great goals, broken records and inspired teams beyond compare, even this year, only to be met with a passive shrug in acknowledgement because he’s done it so much and so often. His magic, greater than anything seen anywhere else over many years, has become the norm.
There is a reason artists are more appreciated after they are gone, because people take time to miss and appreciate them. It has been levelled at Messi that his year hasn’t been as good by his standards and this is the ultimate way to confess under-appreciation. Like a spoilt child always demanding more, being compared to himself ignores the fact that he has still been lightyears ahead of everybody else.
With Messi’s career beginning to wind down at the age of 34 and the days of the duopoly with Ronaldo a thing of the past, there was a debate to be had. Salah came seventh in the final table of the 2021 Ballon d’Or, which seemed unerringly harsh considering just how well he is currently playing for Liverpool, and Chelsea pair Jorginho and N’Golo Kante were more prominent in the race. This was seemingly based on trophies won.
Given the Blues’ Champions League triumph and Italy’s success at the delayed Euro 2020 finals, Jorginho invariably had a case but, when taking into account how central and direct his role was in both, the certainty of it fades.
Kante was man of the match in both legs of Chelsea’s semi-final victory over Real Madrid and the final against Manchester City. He has rewritten the book on his central defensive midfield position, adding energy and even an attacking threat to become the ultimate all rounder. After France’s exit at the Euros, the previously constant beat of his drum also dissipated.
Support and the volume of it is key and perhaps this is the positive to Messi’s reputation. Excitement over his achievements may not be what it was but, because he has scored and won so often, his name doesn’t disappear.
As hard as it may be to say, the fervour for Lewandowski was largely fuelled by last year’s miscarriage of justice. He needs to be given his moment for 2020, because there were no disagreements or accusations back then, other than towards the decision of cancellation.
Messi’s poor form at Paris Saint-Germain, failing to score in Ligue 1 until recently, makes questions valid but, equally, propping up Barcelona before his exit before going on to win a first international tournament with Argentina showed him at his best and that has just been dismissed by some.
The Ballon d’Or is high on self-importance in 2021 and the Gala shows how seriously it takes itself. Messi’s seventh win may or may not have been the right call but the reaction it has garnered shows that the love he deserves when he reaches his end, while utterly deserved, may not be forthcoming.
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