Lionel Messi Wins the Ballon d'Or... Again: Season Highlight
By Robbie Walls
As Lionel Messi swooped in to claim his SIXTH Ballon d'Or, the usual idiocy of football fans across the world swept its way onto social media.
Van Dijk was robbed! I Prefer Ronaldo. Messi had an average season!
As ever, those people posing as football fans were shocked to see the best player in the world collect another award. For many, he had been outshone by Liverpool's Dutch superstar Virgil van Dijk throughout 2019, as the Reds claimed their sixth Champions League trophy.
Such is the way with modern football, there was outcry that the diminutive Argentine had won the award, with everyone's favourite pundit, Paul Merson, claiming it was a joke that Messi had won it (as quoted by the Tribuna): "What has Messi done? He scores bucketloads of goals in Spain. Again. But he does that every year. He didn’t take it to another level."
As the notion that Messi had not done anything special continued to reverberate around football, it became more and more ludicrous. While, yes, the Barcelona man had not scored the incredible 91 goals that he had done in 2012, he'd still had a better season than anyone else.
Despite failing once again to lead his side to the Champions League trophy, Messi still remained the competition's top scorer with 12 goals, as his side inexcusably crashed out at the semi-final stage.
Equally, at domestic level, Messi was integral as the Catalan giants eased to another La Liga title victory in the 2018/19 season and Messi's tenth of his career. As his team secured the title, the forward bagged his sixth Pichichi award as he finished as the league's top scorer, with 36 goals in just 34 games.
What's remarkable about this statistic is that even in his supposed 'average' season, the Argentina captain was still able to score more in a single league season than any Premier League player has ever done - with Alan Shearer scoring 34 goals to hold the record , albeit in 42 league games.
Unsurprisingly, his 36th goal also helped the 32-year-old claim his sixth - there's becoming a theme here - European Golden Shoe trophy and his third in three seasons.
In the calendar year of 2019 alone - before his Ballon d'Or victory on the 2 December - Messi had scored 41 goals in just 44 games, as well as providing a further 15 assists.
While these stats alone should be enough to settle any dispute over his capture of the golden ball, 2019 also saw Messi become the all-time La Liga leader for hat-tricks, as well as becoming the man with the most La Liga wins, overtaking Iker Casillas who had previously held the record with 346.
As for his competitors, while Van Dijk led his side to Champions League victory, he fell short of claiming the League title, as Liverpool were edged by Pep Guardiola's Manchester City. While it's true that the Ballon d'Or should represent individual form as well as club form - and the former Celtic defender was undoubtedly exceptional in 2019 - Van Dijk was perhaps still not as influential as the Argentine.
Equally, although there is a frustrating shortage of defenders to have won the award, in an era of Messi and Ronaldo it is tough to see a defender warranting first place.
The 2018 ceremony had also seen an unlikely winner in the form of Luka Modric - despite the sensational performance of Kylian Mbappe as France romped to World Cup victory - and thus perhaps it was time to return to normality with a Ronaldo or Messi holding the trophy.
There's plenty of time when they retire for someone else to win it...