The Ballon d’Or award was created in 1956 by a French journalist as an accolade to celebrate individual brilliance in the team game and is generally regarded as the most prestigious within the game. Blackpool’s Stanley Matthews was the winner of the first award with Leo Messi the current holder with the Argentine scooping the prize in 2019 with the pandemic seeing no winner in 2020.
The winner is selected following the votes of a select number of journalists from around the world and s based on player performance during the calendar year
Pursuing the breakaway from France Football, FIFA staged the first ‘The Best’ ceremony in January 2017 in Zurich (Switzerland) with Cristiano Ronaldo picking up the first award. The voting for this award is carried out by an international jury which composes of national team managers and captains, a pool of journalists and a percentage of the vote is also made by fans who vote through the FIFA website.