Where Has All The Excitement Gone?
Football’s biggest individual award was handed out this Monday evening in the famous Chatelet theatre in Paris.
Whenever opinions and voting are involved, one thing is guaranteed: controversy.
Whether it’s bias, people trying to keep friends, having a different view on life and football, or straight out being incompetent, once the voting results are out and we see exactly who’s voted for who, it’s usually a source of a good laugh or two.
Putting that aside, there’s another thing that’s throwing a bit of shade at what would, ideally, be one of the pinnacles of excitement in football – the total lack of suspense surrounding the award.
They were very close to beating that last year with Rodri’s somewhat surprising win, but the balloon (no pun intended) popped hours before when Real Madrid announced their delegation won’t be travelling to Paris, pretty much announcing the winner even before anyone suited up.
Years ago, it was even worse, with supposedly leaked photos of the standings, journalists sharing information beforehand, leaving the viewers across the world, as well as the main protagonists, just waiting for the proceedings to unfold, causing some to come up with creative names for the whole thing, such as, for example, the Ballon Bore.
Number One Checks Out, But What About The Rest?
To cut to the point, Ousmane Dembélé won his first Ballon d’Or to put the icing on the cake of a truly remarkable season, both individually and collectively.
He’s won it all (sorry, FIFA Club World Cup), and in quite some fashion.
It’s also a perfect ending for an all-around feel-good story as the proverbial lost son finally fulfilled his potential.
Leaving the injuries and the disciplinary problems behind was a crucial first step; availability proved to truly the best ability, as we could hear in this week’s episode of Numbers Don’t Lie powered by Sofascore, aired on CBS Sports Golazo Network.
Just a glance at the rest of the numbers discussed in the show makes everything perfectly clear: Dembélé cut the time needed to produce a goal or assist by nearly two, from 150 minutes to just under 79, delivering consistently for Les Parisiens.
His win, pretty much everyone will agree, is well-deserved.
The controversy, however, begins soon after.
The talk of the town is Raphinha and his unexpectedly low ranking in the voting.
The Brazilian attacking midfielder enjoyed the best season of his career so far, inspiring Barcelona’s super-successful season and entering his footballing peak.
His individual season was, quite literally, record-breaking: he equalled Cristiano Ronaldo’s record for most goal involvements in a single UCL season with 21 (13G+3A).
And that’s exactly what we talked about in the opening sequence of the article.
Bias, good relationships, and personal taste give us a completely different picture in comparison with pure, undisputed, and perfectly objective data.
Sofascore’s consistent criteria, based on numbers, made it pretty clear: Raphinha was the Player of the Season, both in the Champions League and in LaLiga.
The truth is, as it is always the case in life, somewhere in between, as there’s more to football than just bare numbers, but one thing is clear: Raphinha clocking in at number five after such a season?
Laughable, to say the least.
Your Week’s Overview Through the Numbers:
The CBS crew touched on some other interesting talking points of the week.
Marcus Rashford’s brace for Barça sparked a debate on why leaving the Theatre of Dreams actually takes a growing number of players much closer to achieving their dreams.
The Premier League clash between Arsenal and Manchester City promised a mouth-watering battle of two title contenders, but in reality, it exposed two flawed teams and managers with an unusually conservative approach once the going got tough, resulting in the lowest-ever ball possession for a team led by Pep Guardiola.
Flaws are not foreign to Real Madrid, either: Even though their star man’s output is always good news, the fact that Kylian Mbappé has taken part in 67% of their goals this season might soon become a sign of worry, especially given the fact that it all suggests Xabi Alonso won’t find a way to fit Rodrygo into his system and that Vinícius Júnior hasn’t quite followed up on his promise to “do 10 times more if necessary” after his last year’s Ballon d’Or snub.
He was, however, right about one thing he said on that occasion: “They won’t be ready”.
It came as quite a surprise when he fell from second to 16th in the Ballon d’Or ranks in a year, but… after all, he did warn us.
You can watch the full episode of Numbers Don’t Lie powered by Sofascore on this link.
