TThe Ballon d’Or, football’s most famous individual award, wasn’t always the gold standard for boredom that it has become over the past sixteen years. Starting in 1990, 17 different players won the award over the next 18 years, with winners coming not only from Brazil, Germany, France and Italy, but also from Ukraine, Liberia, Bulgaria and even England.

But if the names from the nineties come at you like a wave of nostalgia – Van Basten! Baggio! Stoichkov! Woe! Ronaldo! Rivaldo! – the list from 2008 onwards is crushingly repetitive. Cristiano Ronaldo won his first gong that year, Lionel Messi succeeded him, and what was once a fun way to showcase a great player – or at least twelve excellent months – turned into a proxy war for the most exaggerated debate on social media. Messi and Ronaldo won 13 of 15 trophies between 2008 and 2023, a duopoly driven by the players’ ruthless brilliance, but also driven by the marketing machines of Adidas and Nike, as well as political voices.

As scintillating as it was to watch the pair strive to beat each other on the pitch, especially during the nine seasons they shared in La Liga, it was annoying to see them in tuxedos with tight grins, each wearing their inflated bunch of Balloons to enlarge. year. It reduced the award to a mind-numbing reminder of what even the most casual fan already knew: that Messi and Ronaldo have been the best footballers of the past twenty years.

For such a prestigious award, the Ballon d’Or, announced Monday for 2024, has a pleasantly quirky backstory. Organized by France Football magazine, the award was the brainchild of player and journalist Gabriel Hanot and editor Jacques Ferran (the pair also helped devise the European Cup). In 1956, Stanley Matthews was voted the first winner, despite the fact that the great winger was then 41, three years removed from his career-defining FA Cup victory and, even for such an ageless wonder, past his prime. On his very first attempt, the Ballon d’Or effectively failed in its mission and earned him a Lifetime Achievement Award.

In the decades that followed, legends like Alfredo Di Stéfano, Johan Cruyff, George Best and Franz Beckenbauer rubbed shoulders with left-field choices including Denmark’s Allan Simonsen and the Soviet Union’s Igor Belanov. Nobody got too angry. But in the modern era of individual football, the Ballon d’Or has become a weapon; something that one longs for and longs for to a remarkable degree.

So much so that the then editor-in-chief of France Football, Pascal Ferré, told the New York Times in 2021: “Cristiano Ronaldo has only one ambition, and that is to retire with more Ballons d’Or than Messi… I know that. because he told me.” The player dismissed this as lies, but his self-serving documentary, Ronaldo, is bookended by him winning his second and third Ballons d’Or in 2013 and 2014, positioned as if they were his ultimate prize, despite the 12 months in between, including his first Champions League victory with Real Madrid and a World Cup campaign with Portugal.

Several other players have made career-altering decisions just to try and get their hands on the coveted golden orb. Neymar’s departure from Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain in 2017 wasn’t just about making loads of money. “Winning the Ballon d’Or is something that I have set as a goal, it would be a personal victory,” said the Brazilian, calculating that it would be impossible to do so in the shadow of Messi at Barça.

If that sounds like the Ballon d’Or has been more trouble than it’s worth, it’s important to remember that the award can have a positive impact. The most globally celebrated winner came in 1995, after it was opened beyond European players, when George Weah collected the award. Did the wonderfully skilled Weah earn more than, for example, Jari Litmanen, who inspired Ajax to win the 1995 Champions League, a free-scoring Jürgen Klinsmann or several other contenders? Not necessarily. But in honoring Weah, the Ballon d’Or recognized the growing influence of African footballers. The Liberian forward became an inspiration to aspiring players across the continent.

It is a depressing statistic that despite the impact African players have since had on European football, Weah remains the continent’s only winner. Moreover, the Ballon d’Or Féminin may have arrived too late in 2018, but it has increased the achievements of the best female players. And with four different winners in five years, it has provided greater variety than its male counterpart, which has had the same number of different winners in fifteen attempts.

A low point for the men’s prize came in 2023. Messi claiming an eighth Ballon d’Or felt empty – winning a World Cup was the finishing touch to his legacy, it added nothing – and also strangely arbitrary. Messi was fantastic for Argentina for a month, but his club form was stable and was he really better than Kylian Mbappé, who also led his side to the final and went on to score a hat-trick? If France had won on penalties instead of Argentina, it is almost certain that Mbappe would have won the award ahead of Messi. The fate of the Ballon d’Or was essentially decided by Kingsley Coman and Aurélien Tchouaméni missing penalties, while Gonzalo Montiel scored. What logic is this?

It is now too late to give the 2023 prize to Mbappé, or to Erling Haaland or Manchester City’s Kevin De Bruyne. Nor can we correct the mistake that Andrés Iniesta and Xavi have won a total of zero trophies, despite transformative roles in the game-changing sides of Barcelona and Spain. Yet there are golden rays of hope for the prize. For the first time in 21 years, there is no Messi or Ronaldo – or any previous winner – on the 30-player shortlist. It looks like a showdown between Vinícius Júnior, who would be the first black winner since his compatriot Ronaldinho 19 years ago, or Rodri who would be the first male Spanish winner since Barcelona’s Luis Suárez (not that one) in 1960.

It feels like a refresh, and with Mbappe and Haaland in their prime – and young pretenders Lamine Yamal, Jude Bellingham, Jamal Musiala et al. quickly catching up – the Ballon d’Or doesn’t seem ready for years of repetition. The players are doing their part, but the way we look at the prize must also change. It cannot simply be a tool to tell us what we already know; let FIFA’s everyday rival ‘The Best’ do that.

To return the Ballon d’Or to its former glory, we all need to do something that is anathema to modern football: take it less seriously. Football already has a hard currency for success: the wins, the trophies, the goals, the data. If the Ballon d’Or can once again be an antidote to that – something more malleable, more inspiring, warmer and more powerful – then that in itself is worth celebrating.