It was, in essence, all just build-up. Sure, it was intensely glamourous, it was broadcast around the world, it was the subject of much heated debate, and at least one person in the world — Cristiano Ronaldo — really cared about the fact that Cristiano Ronaldo won. But still, the Ballon d'Or (and associated other awards) ceremony was only there to set up what comes afterwards, what we were all really waiting for. First they had the ceremony ...
The weird and wonderful world of Ballon d’Or voting
The Ballon d’Or isn’t about the winners. It’s about the voting.
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... and then they published the voting lists.
Who knew a simple list could give such pleasure? Or, rather, a list of lists; a collection of top threes all lined up in a row, for your nitpicking, outraged, "Shirley, he can't be serious" pleasure. Here's where the true gold is: we all knew, after all, that Cristiano Ronaldo was probably the best player of 2014, and that Lionel Messi was probably second best. But we didn't know about the details, the granularity. The path to the obvious answer may have appeared smooth, but was in fact strewn with fascinating questions.
We didn't know, for example, that of the world's media, only the representatives of Uruguay and Colombia held Bastian Schweinsteiger in highest regard. We didn't know that 114 people couldn't find a place for Ronaldo in their top three at all. And we certainly didn't know that Roy Hodgson, manager of England, thought Javier Mascherano was the best player of the whole damn year.
The question of Roy Hodgson
In fairness to Hodgson, he's not alone. Andrei Zygmantovich, coach of Belarus, agrees with him on Mascherano (who, with two votes, is the second-most unusual choice for bestest best of 2014). Naturally, Hodgson being Hodgson, his choice has been the subject of much derision throughout England, not least from those Liverpool fans who can still remember — with much fondness, of course — that time he replaced the Argentine at Anfield with Christian Poulsen. Oh, Roy! Don't remind people of that!
But let’s meet the man on his own terms. It would, you suspect, be slightly forced for Hodgson to vote for Ronaldo, or Messi, or somebody else exciting. They play football, yes, but do they play his football? No. The game is a broad church, and while many of its pilgrims indulge themselves in the easy pleasures of thrills and skills and goals and happiness, some prefer to walk a more ascetic path. To pay homage to defensive midfielders. To recognise that destruction, and the pursuit of destruction, has its own beauty, its own creed, its own deities. And to vote accordingly.
Besides, whatever the world's entertainers spent their years doing, none of them did what Mascherano did. None of them tore their anus while making a game-saving tackle in a World Cup semi-final. You have to respect that. And you have to respect that Roy does.
The question of Paul Pogba
One of the joint least popular first-choice players was Juventus and France midfielder Paul Pogba, who was the selection of precisely one voter: Luc Ollivier, Tahiti's nominated media representative. Lacking the ability to dive into Mr. Ollivier's brain and sift through his thought processes, we can only assume that his votes was cast with the long game in mind.
Because when Pogba does win the Ballon d’Or, he’ll be able to say: “I was there there first. I was in before he got big. I was voting for Pogba while you were all going on about Ronaldo.” This is, in essence, the small-run independent label 7” before Pogba moves on to multi-platinum albums and everybody starts lining up to vote for him. This is Paul Pogba at the Manchester Free Trade Hall. We applaud Mr. Ollivier’s dedication to and investment in the cause of Ballon d’Or hipsterism.
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The question of Sergio Ramos
The other was Sergio Ramos, whose only first-choice vote came from his club teammate Cristiano Ronaldo. He was, in fact, the least popular of all the 23 players on the shortlist, picking up just 16 points, four fewer than Pogba. (One point for a third-place vote; three points for a second; five for a first) Some gratitude for the man who scored the vital goal in the Champions League final, hey? Who’d be a defender?
The question of goalkeepers
As is traditional, one member of the footballing community was delivered up to stand next to Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo for a bit, before failing to win the thing. But joining past bronze medalists Xavi, Andrés Iniesta (more on him later) and Franck Ribéry this year was Manuel Neuer. Who is a goalkeeper. Who is allowed to use his hands.
Many of the arguments in favour of Neuer boiled down to two things. First, everybody’s a bit bored of the Messi-Ronaldo duopoly, a point of view that is both slightly petty and entirely fair and understandable, and so need not detain us further.
The second, though, was the suggestion that he’d somehow “redefined” goalkeeping through his hyper-aggressive interpretation of the sweeper-keeper role, a claim that rather ignores the sterling work done in the field of silly goalkeeping by plenty of his predecessors and colleagues, from Jan Jongbloed through René Higuita and on to Víctor Valdés. At best, Neuer is rushing madly out to the centre circle on the shoulders of giants, clumsy metaphor notwithstanding. It also sounds a bit patronising. “Guys, he’s so good at goalkeeping that he’s almost a proper footballer!”
No, more interesting is the fact that he wasn't even the best goalkeeper in the world. At least, not if you are (or you agree with) Javier Aguirre (coach of Japan), Quinton Griffith (captain of Antigua and Barbuda), Umara Bangura (captain of Sierra Leone) or Vincent Kompany (occasional Match of the Day pundit), all of whom voted for Thibaut Courtois. While the big Belgian hasn't redefined anything — perhaps you only get to redefine something if you win a World Cup in the process — but he was the last line of defence for Atletico Madrid, perhaps the most remarkable team of 2013-14, and has since effortlessly displaced the still-really-pretty-good Petr Čech in nets for Chelsea. A goalkeeper recognised for being a goalkeeper; for his astounding reflexes and elastic arms, not for a few clearances against Algeria. It's nice that there are a few people out there who don't need the tenuous excuse of genre-busting to show the 'keepers a little love.
The question of the Premier League
Luis Suárez didn't make the shortlist, despite winning the European Golden Shoe. Nor did David Silva, despite being brilliant and not biting anybody. And of the five Premier League players who did make the cut, three of them — Angel Di María, Thibault Courtois and Diego Costa — moved to those rainy shores in the summer.
Just two players from the Look Upon Our Work Ye Mighty And Despair League in the World were there on the basis of their work in England, then, Eden Hazard and Yaya Touré. And they were the only two players in the whole electoin not to pick up a first-place vote. Oh dear, Premier League. Oh dear, Sky Sports. Must try harder.
The question of Andrés Iniesta
There is no doubt that, at his best, Andrés Iniesta is one of the most sublimely skilled footballers on the planet. He is a vision, able to take the fundamentally mucky business of running and kicking and elevate it to something luminous, something delicate, something virtually frictionless. But equally, he hasn't quite been at his best for a couple of seasons now. Though it's their magnificent No. 10 who gets all the attention, Barcelona's recent convulsions have also affected the form of their No. 8, and his World Cup with Spain didn't go all that well.
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Yet when it comes to the voting, Iniesta abides. There he is in the midfield of the FIFPro/FIFA Team of the Year; there he is, picking up a fair few third and second place votes in the individual category. (Shouts to Jaba Kankava, captain of Georgia, Roca Albert, coach of El Salvador, and Juan Ramón López Caro, coach of Saudi Arabia, who all had him in first place). Perhaps that’s basically just a problem of inertia: he was astounding for a bit, so he probably he still is, so that’s the voting done. What’s for tea?
But maybe it’s something more noble. Where many modern footballers can, at times, be hard people to love, Iniesta — however he’s playing — has never been anything less than entirely adorable. And where modern football itself can, at times, be a remorseless, almost overwhelmingly physical battle, all pace and power, Iniesta has always been almost old-fashioned in his soft-shoed stylings. Love and nostalgia are two of the most powerful forces in the universe -- along with hunger, habit, gravity and your leg just before you stub your toe -- and here they combine in the form of one still-really-very-good player. A vote for Iniesta is, perhaps, a vote for footballers and for football as they should be. As they (never actually) once were. As they (will never) could perhaps be again.
Look, who are we to judge? SB Nation were not invited to vote, yet we wrote to FIFA with our top three anyway. 3. Álvaro Recoba. 2. Álvaro Recoba. 1. Álvaro Recoba.
No, he didn’t win. No, he never does.
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