Lionel Messi became a record-breaking 7-time winner of the Ballon d’Or award at the 65th annual edition, which took place on November 29, 2021.

The Argentine finished with 613 points, ahead of fierce rival Robert Lewandoski, who finished with 580 points.

There were several claims about Lionel Messi not deserving the award and the Ballon d’Or being a robbery.

In this post, we’d be addressing the event from different points of view and be drawing our conclusions at the end.

View 1: The Ballon d’or is for the best player, not for the highest goal scorer.

I want you to know that there are prizes for the top goal scorers in Europe, such as the European Golden Boot. Lewandowski won it last season, but that doesn’t mean he’ll win the Ballon d’Or, which is awarded to the best player in the world.

Just so you know, Messi was the highest goal scorer in 2016, 2017 and 2018 and he didn’t win the Ballon d’or. In the 2015/16 season, Luis Suarez had arguably his best season, scoring goals even while Lionel Messi was injured. He ended up in fourth place in the Ballon d’Or ranking.

If Lewandoski should win it based on the goals he scored, then we should address why Luis Suarez didn’t win the Ballon d’Or 2016. Suarez had the most goals and the most assists, ahead of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.

If the award were given based on goals, there’d be no way midfielders and defenders could get it. In addition to that, Messi would be holding 9 Ballon d’Or awards while Ronaldo has 3.

View 2: How the Ballon d’Or was rated in 2018.

In 2018, Messi had to sit in the 5th position of the Ballon d’or ranking despite winning the domestic double, having the highest goal contribution, winning the golden boot and being named La Liga player of the year.

Mbappe, who was absent almost throughout the season, was the 4th in the rankings because he had a fantastic world cup campaign.

Greizman finished third just because he was part of the winning team in the World Cup, despite having an awkward season.

Even the winner of the Ballon d’Or that season, Luka Modric, didn’t have 1/4th of Messi’s goals and assists and yet still won it all because of his beautiful WC run.

Fast forward to 2021, Messi took Argentina to their first Copa America win for the first time in 28 years, being the player of the tournament, scoring the most goals and having the highest assists.

And now we expect the criteria of the award to change because he didn’t score the highest goals in the season?

View 3: Messi performance being underrated.

FC Barcelona was 13 points off the top of the table in January, but Lionel Messi scored 23 goals in 21 league games to pull the club back into contention.

He had 16 MOTM awards in that period. At the end of the season, Messi had 27 MOTM awards, while Robert Lewandoski had just 13.

At a personal level, Messi was so good that when he left FC Barcelona, they could barely win a match. It shows how average of a club Barca is. While Lewandoski played for the best team in Europe at the time.

Even without Lewandoski in a match, Bayern Munich can easily win the game.

View 4: Ballon d’or is based on votes.

The criteria for winning the Ballon d’Or are based on field performance and overall behavior on and off the pitch.

Secondly, the winner is decided based on votes from national team coaches, and captains from the collections of FIFA’s 209 national associations and special journalists.

It’s important to know that these people are human and that they are free to choose the people of their choice.

Furthermore, calling the win for Messi robbery would be bias. For you to be in the Ballon d’Or top 3, it automatically qualifies you to be a winner, and then something must come into play to decide who goes home with the award. The votes has to decide.

Moreover, we’d all agree that both Lewandoski and Lionel Messi deserve the award. Let’s leave our bias aside and let the voters do it like they’ve always done.

View 5: The Ballon d’or organizers proved this is indeed robbery.

The ballon d’or organizers need to give us an explanation why Robert Lewandoski wasn’t given the award for his 2020 performance, they could have done the ceremony online and find a way to get the award to the winner instead they chose the path of saying the ceremony won’t be holding due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2021, they could have just awarded two Ballon d’or awards, one for the winner of 2020 and the other for the winner of 2021, but instead they chose to create a whole new category of award and announced it a few minutes into the ceremony.

Ballon d’Or defiled their rules of the award being based on votes, because obviously no one voted for Robert Lewandoski as the best striker. Giving him an award made of cartons just to compensate him is a big form of ridicule.

If they’re giving an award for the best striker, what about the best midfielder and the best defender?

Not giving Lewandoski his award for 2020 and compensating him with a carton and a whole new category of award just on the day of the ceremony is pure trash. This is exactly how award organizers lose their credibility.

View 6: Edouard Mendy vs. Gianluigi Donnarumma.

This isn’t much talked about, probably because it’s not Messi. Well, there are different perspectives on this. But before we check those views, I’d love to display their stats to you

Edouard Mendy vs Gianluigi Donnarumma

Games: 50-54

Clean sheets: 27-14

Goals conceded : 29-47

Trophies: 2-1

Despite Mendy having a better stat overall, Donnarumma won it with 594 points, 190 points ahead of Mendy.

It’s so funny how this isn’t the case but Messi winning the Ballon d’or is the biggest Robbery. But lets check this out on different views….

Firstly the award is based on votes and Donnarumma won it based on that. Secondly: international trophies seem to take predominance over any other team trophy.

Probably the reason why Messi didn’t win the Ballon d’or in 2016, 17 and 2018 because of his country performance.