Lionel Messi’s victory and Kylian Mbappé’s third place still go so badly for Didier Deschamps, who pointed out the choice of a journalist responsible for the votes.
The Ballon d’Or won by Lionel Messi last October has not stopped talking. His previous success, in 2021, had already caused heated controversy. Consequence of the XXL seasons delivered by Robert Lewandowski. So much so that France Football, organizer of the Ballon d’Or, decided to change the rules of the game, limiting the number of journalists invited to vote to 100. The fault of certain sometimes eccentric votes on the part of representatives of small nations.
But for Didier Deschamps, the problem is not completely resolved. This is evidenced by the comments made by the French coach in his interview with Le Parisien this weekend. ” At-beyond his third place, it was especially certain votes that appealed to me. A jury that didn’t put Messi, Haaland and Mbappé among the top five, I’m not voting for it anymore! His vote is really not very serious,” he said, suggesting that a journalist had not included either Lionel Messi, Erling Haaland or Kylian Mbappé in his Top 5.
But it is clear that the French coach must have misread the details of the votes for the Ballon d’Or. No journalist is in fact deadlocked on the three best players in the world in 2023. Moreover, only one voter did not place one of the three players in first place: the representative of Portugal, who preferred Bernardo Silva. He nevertheless placed Lionel Messi in third place, ahead of Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappé. For the rest, if the Cameroonian journalist placed the PSG striker in first place, he had ignored his two competitors. Same scenario for the Swiss journalist, who favored the Norwegian, but shunned his two competitors.
