Monday 12 January 2015 11:15, UK
Two familiar names and a World Cup hero will vie for the ultimate personal accolade in football at the Ballon d'Or awards on Monday night. James Galloway takes a closer look at the contenders.
Football may be a team game, but managers need stars just as much as fans need heroes and on Monday night one of Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi or Manuel Neuer will be awarded the prestigious FIFA Ballon d'Or.
In an unprecedented era of domination by two men, Ronaldo, last year’s winner, and four-time victor Messi have shared the award between them over the last six years, but for Bayern Munich and Germany star Neuer, it represents a rare appearance for a goalkeeper on the final shortlist.
Who deserves the 2014 award the most? We assess the three candidates…
Ronaldo in 2014:
Real Madrid: 51 games, 56 goals / Portugal: 9 games, 5 goals
Total: 60 games, 61 goals
Trophies won: Champions League, Spanish Cup, Super Cup, Club World Cup
Having broken Lionel Messi's stranglehold on the award in 2013, Cristiano Ronaldo is the red-hot favourite to make it back-to-back triumphs after another scintillating 12-month period in which the Portuguese has plundered a glut of goals. Since Messi broke the world goal-scoring record for a calendar year in 2012, the perception has been that the Argentine genius, in part due to injuries, has slightly dipped from the rarefied realm he was operating in for several seasons, whereas Ronaldo, fast approaching 30, has found a new peak.
It's now become so routine to see the Real Madrid star's scoring statistics as showing better than one goal in every game that it's actually no longer surprising. Such repeatedly astonishing feats should continue to be held in awe however, particularly when they contribute to the winning of football's biggest prizes. That was certainly the case in 2014 as Ronaldo, at the fifth attempt since arriving at the Bernabeu from Manchester United, finally got his hands on the Champions League trophy as a Real Madrid player. The Portuguese's penalty put the icing on Real's dramatic extra-time victory over city rivals Atletico and was certainly fitting given he contributed 17 goals during the course of Real’s run to a coveted 10th European title, a new competition record.
While injury kept him out of his side's Copa del Rey final triumph against arch rivals Barcelona, the lowpoint of Ronaldo's year ultimately came in Brazil at the World Cup when Portugal meekly bowed out in the group stage thanks in part to an opening game thumping by eventual champions Germany. Battling against an injured knee, the task of captaining a hardly-vintage Portuguese side to any achievement of note was always going to be a tall order, and anyway Ronaldo had more than done his bit to get them there in the first place with a hat-trick to turn the tide in their play-off match against Sweden the previous November.
In short, with more than 60 goals to his name along with an array of team and personal accolades in 2014, it proved another phenomenal year from a truly phenomenal player.
Messi in 2014:
Barcelona: 52 games, 50 goals / Argentina: 14 games, 8 goals
Total: 66 games, 58 goals
Trophies won: None
The most successful player in the history of the Ballon d'Or/World Player of the Year awards with four wins has incredibly been a fixture in the top three of the rankings for eight years now, which when you consider Messi is just 27, represents astonishing pre-eminence on the world scale.
While 2014 represented the first time in seven years that Messi didn't pick up any trophies with either Barcelona or Argentina, in many ways the year ticked a number of significant career boxes for the diminutive star personally. Having failed to find the net at the 2010 World Cup, Messi was Argentina's top scorer in Brazil with four goals en route to their final against Germany, although his subsequent failure to prove the match winner on the biggest stage of all still brought some criticism that he had ultimately underdelivered. The prestigious Golden Ball for the player of the tournament suggested otherwise, although football's humble superstar looked rather embarrassed himself to be singled out for praise in the wake of the Germans' impressive triumph.
Barcelona's barren 2014 will be remembered as a nearly year, the Catalans narrowly denied by Atletico Madrid in both league and Champions League and a Gareth Bale-inspired Real in the Copa del Rey final. The personal achievements kept coming for Messi though: the Argentine broke the all-time records for goals in La Liga and then the Champions League, the latter achieved just ahead of Ronaldo.
It appears unlikely that Messi, whose relationship with Barcelona coach Luis Enrique is currently at the centre of plenty of scrutiny, will pip his generational rival to another World Player of the Year title this time round, despite actually scoring only fractionally fewer goals than Ronaldo during the calendar year. What certainly shouldn't be overlooked is that his record of 58 strikes in 66 games for club and country in 2014 is by any historical scale, outstanding.
Neuer in 2014:
Bayern Munich: 49 games, 26 clean sheets / Germany: 9 games, 5 clean sheets
Total: 58 games, 31 clean sheets
Trophies won: World Cup, Bundesliga, German Cup
It’s already fitting recognition of Manuel Neuer’s status in world football that he has overcome the perennial failure to acknowledge goalkeepers in such awards to earn his place on the final shortlist. While clean sheets and saves at the feet of onrushing strikers are invariably never going to be as ‘showbiz’ – or, if truth be told, memorable – as goals and mesmerising footwork, the performance of the man between the sticks routinely makes or breaks a team’s pursuit of success.
With that in mind, it is something of a disservice to the goalkeeping union that only one of their number, the legendary Lev Yashin, has ever been awarded the Ballon d'Or - and that was back in 1963. In fact, it’s nearly a decade since a ‘keeper even made the top three - Italy’s Gianluigi Buffon in 2006 - with one of Neuer’s illustrious predecessors at Bayern Munich and in the German national team, Oliver Kahn, the last goalkeeper to feature prominently in the pre-amalgamated FIFA award.
That Neuer has finally ended that wait is predominantly thanks to the 28-year-old's heroics at last summer's World Cup, when he conceded just four goals en route to Germany's first triumph on the world stage in a generation. After all, Neuer, widely regarded as the world's best stopper for a while now, was a pivotal part of Bayern’s run to Champions League glory and a domestic double in 2013, yet he finished just 23rd in that year's World Player of the Year vote.
As shown by the cases of Buffon and Kahn in 2006 and 2002 respectively, the unique platform provided by the World Cup certainly gives a greater chance for goalkeepers to emerge as the stars and Neuer, officially recognised as the best in his position at the tournament, certainly took his chance. The term 'sweeper keeper' is hardly a new phenomenon in football, but it's arguable that Germany's No 1 has taken it to a new athletic level, as his decisive bursts out of the penalty area in the tight last-16 tie with Algeria demonstrated.
The odds suggest Neuer could split the Ronaldo/Messi duopoly of recent years in the Ballon d'Or voting, which in this era of two dominant players would be some achievement in itself.
Watch the Ballon d'Or awards live on Sky Sports 5 HD at 5.30pm on Monday
