Series: Trying To Predict The Ballon D'Or - Part One
Also known as the 'let's make Vince look like an idiot' series.
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One mildly shitty thing to add to 2020 is that the Ballon D’Or was scrapped.
The yearly award is given to the best player in world soccer for the year, and as you can see - it’s been dominated by two guys for a while now.
Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have won 11 of the last 12 awards, with Luca Modric winning in 2018 (more about that later).
Here are the finalists for the last four awards.
So, now there’s like a full 12 months until the next Ballon D’Or, I thought I’d try something a little bit fun - and what should be a great way to find some potential cards.
From now until the next award ceremony, I’m going to try a few different statistical models and see if I can predict the Ballon D’Or finalists in order.
Now there are a few things that are a bit of a spanner in the works (okay, a major spanner) when trying to predict something like this.
International Tournaments: One major factor in Ballon D’Or voting is a player’s performance in a major international tournament. Luca Modric won the Ballon D’Or in 2018 based almost entirely off his World Cup - Fabio Cannavaro pretty much did the same in 2006. I think when there’s a major tournament (like the Euros), you’d almost have to scale their numbers… It’s going to be tricky.
Narrative/Hype: The Ballon D’Or is voted on by media members, coaches, and international team captains. This means that there’s always going to be some underlying narrative or hype that can impact voting.
Defenders: Finding a good statistical model that compares defenders and attackers and ranks them evenly is pretty bloody hard. However, it’s mostly attacking players that win the award so I’m not too stressed about that.
Trying to find any patterns: It’s hard to find any overarching pattern for past success in the Ballon D’Or because Messi and Ronaldo have dominated the award for so long.
Having said that though, there’s no harm in trying.
Attempt One - Simple Is Best?
We’ve got plenty of time to try and fine tune this over the year. For my first attempt, I took the simplest approach.
Basically, I just took all of the stats I think are important for eye-catching attacking play and added them together.
Here are the stats that I used:
Goals
xG
Assists
xA
Successful attacking actions per 90
Dribbles per 90
Touches in box per 90
Shot assists per 90
Smart passes per 90
Key passes per 90
Also, because I think goals are the most important thing in soccer (call me crazy), I weighted goals and expected goals a little different. I basically doubled a player’s xG and total goals to give more emphasis to goal scorers.
All in all, a pretty simple model. Let’s see how it goes.
The Top 10 For This Season
I put all the players from the top five European leagues though this model, with one exception:
I only included the top 150 players sorted by transfer value. It seemed pretty unlikely that a player from outside that sample would win the award, and I wanted to exclude most players performing well for smaller teams (and would have zero chance at winning the award)
With that in mind, here is the top ten this season (at the time of writing)
Here’s my thoughts on each of the players listed (with links to their cards on eBay):
K. Mbappé: Is arguably already the best player in the world. The French league started earlier than every other league, but he has missed some time - so I guess it all evens out.
L. Messi: In what is a ‘down’ year for Messi, he is still putting up amazing numbers. Shows how good he really is.
R. Lewandowski: No surprises to see the goal machine here. Lewandowski is so good.
Cristiano Ronaldo: Even missing some time with COVID (remember that?!) Ronaldo is still putting up numbers!
Mohamed Salah: Salah has been Liverpool’s best player this season by far. Criminally underrated.
M. Depay: Not a name I expected to see, but a very underrated player. Again, like I said with Mbappe, the French league started earlier than all others, so he’s played more minutes. Although, it would be interesting to see how he plays over the rest of the year.
R. Lukaku: Speaking of underrated. Everyone shits on Lukaku for no reason. He’s a fucking stud. Inter’s main man, and has been playing well.
H. Kane: If Salah isn’t the best player in the Prem this year, Harry Kane (or the guy I have next) is next in line. Kane has dropped a little deeper at times this season and already has a bunch of assists.
J. Grealish: My man-love for Jack Grealish is well documented. I can’t see him winning the Ballon D’Or at Villa, but if he was at a bigger side, he’d be in the conversation.
Neymar: Similar to Mbappe, French league has played more games, but he’s been injured. Neymar has been injured a while, so the fact he’s still top ten is impressive. However, I can’t see him winning the Ballon D’Or with Mbappe in his side - maybe in a World Cup year if he wins it with Brazil.
To be honest, I’m pretty bloody happy with that list. There’s a few guys who I don’t think would be in the top ten if the award was
The Best of the Rest
Here are the 11th through 15th place finishers so far using this model.
Bruno Fernandes: Has been balling out for Man United. You think he’d make the 30 player shortlist.
S. Mané: He’s still one of the best attackers in the Premier League.
D. Calvert-Lewin: Started the year on fire, definitely improved. It wouldn’t shock me to see him on the 30-player shortlist if he keeps playing at this rate.
E. Haaland: The fact Haaland is in the top 15 despite being injured is pretty special. If he plays enough I’d expect him to be top five or six this year in this table.
W. Zaha: Zaha is having a brilliant season, but won’t be anywhere near while playing for Palace. It’s one of those things, what he does doesn’t really scale up to play in the very best sides, so he’s probably going to continue to score
How Good Would This Model Have Been Last Year?
So, I know that the Ballon D’Or was cancelled this season, but let’s see how this model would have predicted the award. Here is the top ten.
Here’s my thoughts on the results with links to their cards on eBay.
R. Lewandowski: Was probably going to win the award if it was on. Was easily the best player in the best team.
L. Messi: Was in the top three shortlist for the FIFA Best award, and I would have thought he would have been second for the Ballon D’Or.
K. Mbappé: A great player, perhaps if PSG had won the Champions League he would have done better here. Unsure how he would have gone in the Ballon D’Or… May not have been top three, but would have been top ten, and probably top five.
R. Sterling: Was brilliant, but I’d think KDB would have got the flowers from Man City.
Cristiano Ronaldo: Was on the top three shortlist for the FIFA Best, and I think he might have been top three for this too. Not too unhappy with him fifth though.
H. Kane: Has been a great player for a long time. Would have been in the top 30 shortlist…. Don’t know about top ten.
R. Jiminez: Another in the ‘great player, but not Ballon D’Or quality. Performing for a weaker team like Wolves (as good as they were last season) won’t be voted the same as the same numbers in a Champions League team.
Bruno Fernandes: Was brilliant when he moved to Man U.
S. Mané: In a star-studded Liverpool, Mane was their best attacking player. I have no problems with him here.
T. Werner: One of the best strikers in Germany with a team that made top four in the Champions League. Awesome resume to me.
Thoughts
You know what…. for a first effort I’m pretty fucking happy with this list.
If you had told me that the final three for the Ballon D’Or this year if they had it was going to be:
I wouldn’t have been too surprised at all. Likewise with this season, so far the list would be:
I don’t hate that at all. I think Mbappe is every chance to win the Ballon D’Or this season. Messi and Lewandowski are having great seasons too. The fact that it’s the same top three in both seasons is a good sign too. Would be concerning if there were some real wildcards at the top.
Granted, there’s a lot of water to go under this bridge. There is still most of a season and all the major international tournaments before December next year.
Granted, going off this small sample size, I like the initial results -although there’s room to improve.
Weaknesses/Ways to Improve
Players like Zaha and Jimenez are great but they have no way of winning the Ballon D’Or.
I think I could limit this to players from Champions League clubs only as a way to improve the model - it’s highly unlikely that a player that isn’t in the Champions League wins the Ballon DO’r.
However, that would have also excluded players like Bruno Fernandes last season as Man U were in the Europa League… It would also exclude players like Jack Grealish this season.
But if you include Europa League teams, then Jimenez is back in anyway.
At the end of the day, Bruno and Jimenez probably weren’t going to be top 10 in the Ballon D’Or last year, and it’s unlikely Grealish is top ten this year… so making the Champions League a cut off isn’t out of the picture down the track.
Some potential ways to work around this would be to give extra points for league/cup positions. The better the team does their league and key tournaments, the more points they get.
This could also be expanded to international tournaments; scaled up of course… winning the World Cup will be worth more points than winning the league.
Either way, I’m really happy with the first test… and I’m actually way more confident in being able to find a model that’ll work by the time the awards is announced.
You Next Steps
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Vince - how on earth is Heung-Min Son not on the list? His numbers are better than Grealish, Mane, Zaha, etc. and on par with DLC, Fernandes, etc. Qualitatively, I rate him and Kane as the two best players in the Premier League at the moment, and I say that as a lifelong Arsenal supporter.