The Ballon d'Or is Dumb, Here's How to Fix It

"I'll take the purple one. No, no, the shiny purple one." Those are the words that popped into my mind as I watched Lionel Messi at the Ballon d'Or ceremony on Monday, in that shiny, shiny purple suit. How did he decide on it? He seemed as bored as anyone there in Zurich as the ceremony, supposedly a celebration of the previous year in soccer, wound on. It's an amazing event. Not only do we get to see Messi truly express himself, but it's a chance to watch a bunch of famous players in one of the most awkward social situations imaginable, shuffling around, primping, fidgeting. The awards themselves are not quite as amazing. The Puskás Award? I get that one, but the Ballon d'Or is a fairly suspect award masquerading as a Very Big Deal.

I'm not the only one who feels this way. The world seems to be turning on the Ballon d'Or, and for good reason. Individual awards in team sports are silly to begin with, but the Ballon d'Or in particular is far from perfect. For one thing, it's basically a glorified popularity contest, but it wasn't always--at least not to the same degree.

"There was a time you could win the previous incarnations of this prize for being the central cog of a great team, even if you yourself weren't the world's best player," wrote Leander Schaerlaeckens at Yahoo!. He's right.

From 1956 to 2009, the Ballon d'Or was an award based on the votes of journalists and handed out by France Football, a French bi-weekly. The FIFA World Player of the Year came into existence much later--in 1991--and was based on the votes of national team captains and coaches. Today's voting reflects the merging of the two awards: journalists, captains, and coaches all vote.

When the award was just open to journalists, there was a kind of separation of church and state that made it, in principle, less of a popularity contest. It wasn't perfect, but it was more true to the spirit of soccer as a team sport. And the award was something of great importance and honor for those participating journalists. Today, the award is all about superstars. Teammates, former teammates, and star struck journeymen choose from some of the biggest names in the business. Oh yeah, and journalists (and some pundits) chime in too.

Consider that this year, Ronaldo and his club Real Madrid essentially campaigned for the award. It worked. Ronaldo probably deserved it anyway. He had a super-human year, winning the Champions League as top scorer--he was also top scorer in La Liga--and is in my view one of the greatest players of all time. But it's hard to argue that his selection was on merit alone, because even assuming all the voters voted based on uninfluenced opinion, the award still isn't merit based.

We have easily-digestible statistics about goals and assists per game, which are a great measure of offensive skill, such as Ronaldo's. It's much harder to judge a defender using numbers. It's no surprise that defenders have won the Ballon d'Or far less frequently than attacking players. (They also get paid less.) But without Sergio Ramos and company, Ronaldo would not have stood on that stage Monday and hoisted the trophy into the air and let out that strange growl-yell.

As Ian Macintosh wrote in his Ballon d'Or takedown over at ESPN, "To me, non-quantifiable individual awards in football only indicate a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of team sports."

But if we are going to engage in the absurdity of awarding individual honars in a team sport like soccer, there are better ways to do it. What if, instead of having one award, FIFA took the team-of-the-year concept one step further and had four awards? Judge all goalkeepers for one award, defenders for another, and so on? At least then we'd be able to consider each position in a certain context. Voters would not have to choose from apples and oranges. (It would also make the award ceremony a little longer, something that would suit FIFA just fine.)

Making the voting anonymous would also make the Ballon d'Or more meaningful. It would be less about popularity, because nobody could hate on you for not voting a certain way, something that's happening in England, where England manager Roy Hodgson is being browbeaten for the contents of his ballot.

None of this, of course, is likely to change. The award will roll on, as is. Next year, you might even find me tuning in to the ceremony's YouTube feed again. But it won't be because I'm excited to see the winner. I just want to see Messi's suit.