France Football will not award the 2020 Ballon d'Or due to the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic to the football season. The decision is certainly not welcome news for the leading candidates to take home the honor, and that is the case for six-time winner Lionel Messi.
The latest stats from WhoScored showed that the Barcelona captain's 8.71 puts him on top of the pack. That could mean that Messi is poised to capture his Ballon No. 7 had the award will go out by the end of the year.
The Catalans failed to retain the La Liga title this season but Messi wrapped up the football campaign in Spain as the top-flight league's scoring champion. The Argentine also figured in Barca's 21 completed goals, which counted as total assists for the skipper in the season and a record for the competition.
Going by the Ballon ranking so far and the way Messi has been playing on the pitch, it's not hard to see that the South American superstar is "the runaway leader in the race for the Ballon d'Or this season," according to The Sun.
The list also indicated that close to Messi are Kylian Mbappe of Paris Saint-Germain and Robert Lewandowski of Bayern Munich. The two strikers appeared breathing hard on the leader's neck, which suggested that the Champions League matches in August will determine largely the outcome of the Ballon race.
No. 4 on the WhoScored ranking is Ronaldo and with the way things have been going lately for Juventus, it would seem that the Portuguese superstar is unlikely to catch up with the Ballon leaders.
It can be said that the 2020 Ballon edition canceled is a blessing in disguise for Ronaldo, whose spell with Real Madrid made for an exciting "El Clasico" rivalry with Messi. According to Talk Sport, no Ballon award this year should be "a sigh of relief," for Ronaldo even though he missed the chance to make it equal with Messi.
Yet at least, Messi will have to wait another season for his seventh trophy, and yes one more campaign for Ronaldo to secure his No. 6.
Meanwhile, Rivaldo, himself a Ballon winner, agreed with the organizers' decision to skip the season for the prestigious award. He affirmed that the suspended games and the matches played behind closed doors rendered the European campaign "weird" at best.
"It was right to decide not to award a Ballon d'Or this year," Marca reported the Barcelona legend as saying.
It was just unfortunate that the canceled Ballon award will impact Lewandowski the most. Rivaldo said the Bayern striker campaigned hard in the season and finished as the league's scoring champion. Most importantly, the Polish star powered the Bavarians to their eighth straight Bundesliga title wins.
Rivaldo said Lewandowski, Messi, and Ronaldo will all miss out on the honor but he maintained canceling the 2020 Ballon d'Or is the right thing to do.
