From its inception in 1956 until 2022, when the voting period was changed from a calendar year to a European league season, the Ballon d’Or formula remained mostly same.

However, just before the 2023 award ceremony, Pep Guardiola suggested a significant change for the leaders of France Football to consider.

Manchester City’s manager declared, “The Ballon d’Or should be split in two: one for [Lionel] Messi, and one for the other players.” What was Messi’s worst season, if you must know? The rest of the team will benefit from that.

One of Messi’s main rivals for the award this year is Erling Haaland, Guardiola’s own talismanic player at Manchester City. Why, though, does Messi’s former coach in Argentina have such faith that he will win the golden ball for an unprecedented eighth year in a row?

Triumph in the World Cup

Almost 1.5 billion people saw Messi’s career highlight. Messi scored twice as the offensive catalyst for an Argentina team that qualified for the World Cup after a 36-year drought.

With five Player of the Match accolades in just seven games, Messi became the first player to win the Golden Ball at consecutive World Cups.

Sometimes, lighting up the biggest show on Earth isn’t enough to get recognized by France Football. After Italy’s 2006 World Cup victory, Fabio Cannavaro was the last player to win both the World Cup and the Ballon d’Or in the same year. That release from defeat in Qatar, however, is not Messi’s greatest achievement this year.

Europe’s most innovative sportsman

Samuel Eto’o scored the first league goal Messi ever assisted on in 2005 against Real Madrid. Nearly two decades later, Messi is still opening up scoring opportunities for the best teams in Africa while Eto’o is fending off match-fixing charges in his role as Cameroon’s football chief.

No player in Europe’s top five leagues has more assists than Messi (16) over the course of the 2022/23 season, the time period to be examined by Ballon d’Or voters. The 36-year-old created a continental-best 16.2 expected assists without relying on any of his Paris Saint-Germain teammates to have hot streaks at the end. To my knowledge, no other player threw more than ten open-play passes into the penalty area. Only two of Messi’s 120 were crosses.

Messi threaded 58 through balls past Ligue 1 defenders, a number that is more indicative of an entire team’s performance than a single player’s. Even Champions League runner-up Inter couldn’t match Messi’s tally from any of Europe’s top five divisions.