When Will the Premier League Be Able to Boast Its Own Ballon d'Or Winner?
On Monday night, Lionel Messi, Neymar or Cristiano Ronaldo will step on to a stage in Zurich to receive the Ballon d’Or trophy and be officially anointed as the best player in the world.
It is likely to be the incomparable Messi holding the trophy for the fifth time in seven years while his team-mate Neymar offers congratulations, and his old rival Ronaldo wears a fixed grin to hide his annoyance and disappointment.
At the same time, La Liga president Javier Tebas will be somewhere wearing a rather large smile, for this ceremony has also become an annual celebration of the Spanish league as the best in the world in recent years.
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Once again, La Liga has greedily dominated the Ballon d’Or this year, and the trophy is guaranteed to return to Spain for a seventh consecutive year.
Since 2010 when the original Ballon d’Or and the FIFA World Player of the Year award were merged, players from La Liga have occupied 16 of the 18 final three positions, with only Manuel Neuer last year and Franck Ribery in 2013 able to gatecrash them.
At least the Bundesliga has managed to get itself an invite in recent years, whereas each year the Premier League becomes the awkward and uninvited guest to the big party, who discovers they are not as popular as they thought.
The Premier League likes to call itself the best league in the world, but every year the Ballon d’Or openly mocks that title and provides an uncomfortable reminder that it still has a long way to go before it earns it.
It is now eight years since the Premier League could boast a Ballon d’Or winner when Cristiano Ronaldo claimed it at Manchester United, and it is unlikely this embarrassingly barren run will end any time soon.
Back in October, there was at least a Premier League presence on the original Ballon d’Or shortlist, with five of the 23 players plying their trade in England.
However, none of the five—Sergio Aguero, recent arrival Kevin De Bruyne, Yaya Toure, Eden Hazard and Alexis Sanchez—were ever potential winners and were merely there to make up the numbers.
England’s reigning Footballer of the Year Eden Hazard was a remarkably poor candidate to go forward and compete for the bigger prize of the Ballon d’Or.
Since becoming the Footballer of the Year in May last year, the Chelsea man has visibly shrunk and done everything he could to undermine his former manager Jose Mourinho’s laughable assertion that he was now better than Ronaldo.
This season, the Belgian playmaker has failed to score in the league as Chelsea have slumped to the edge of the relegation places in the table.
The inescapable truth is the Premier League simply does not have the depth of quality to produce a Ballon d’Or winner at the moment.
If Aguero and Sanchez couldn't make the final three, this season’s most outstanding players—Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez—have even less chance.
It remains an anomaly that for all the Premier League’s popularity and strength the very best players in the world still opt to play elsewhere.
The lure of those twin monolithic Spanish powers, Barcelona and Real Madrid, remains too great for almost all players to resist, and it is only getting bigger.
As Mourinho declared, per the Daily Mail, “If you are an attacking player and go to Barcelona or Real Madrid it is easier to score 50 goals than if you’re playing in England.”
Spain is a comfort zone for these players, offering the best and most compelling stage on which to perform, and above all, a near guarantee of trophies, whereas playing for one of the Premier League’s biggest powers carries too much risk.
Just look at the travails of Chelsea this season, or Manchester United since 2013 or Arsenal’s now 12-year wait to be champions again.
And even when the Premier League appears to be developing a potential Ballon d’Or winner, Barcelona or Real Madrid will swoop in and offer them a safe passage to La Liga, as they did with Gareth Bale in 2013 and Luis Suarez in 2014.
At the moment, there is probably only one player in the Premier League who could develop in to a Ballon d’Or winner: Anthony Martial.
Why do you think Monaco insisted on a clause that they would receive further payments if he won the award when they sold him to Manchester United?
But the Premier League should not lose hope of finally getting an invite to Zurich as it prepares to be submerged in an unprecedented amount of television money.
The new deal—worth £5.14 billion over three years—takes effect from next season, and it will arm the league’s leading clubs with the funds to make a raid on La Liga.
Richer than ever before, Manchester United, Chelsea and Manchester City would all dearly like to purchase a genuine franchise signing this coming summer.
And Tebas is well aware that this new money will make English clubs more powerful than ever before, and embolden them to come calling for some of La Liga’s jewels.
Do not be surprised to see an English club break the world transfer record in the next year, and when that happens, they might finally land a Ballon d’Or winner as well.
