One of the most prestigious individual prizes in world football is about to get a shake-up and it could help Mohamed Salah finally land the award.
France Football magazine has announced that the Ballon d'Or will now be awarded to European football's best footballer, judged over a standard season, as opposed to a calendar year.
The sought-after gong was introduced in 1965 and has always been based on 12 months running from January to December, until now.
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It means that the next Ballon d'Or will take into account the entire 2021/22 season across Europe and for the Women's award, will also take into the account the Women's Euros in July.
The Qatar World Cup, set to take place across November and December this year, will instead form part of the judging for the 2023 edition instead.
The announcement means that any player who has enjoyed peak performance across the 2021/22 season - including Salah - will be in with a chance of winning the next Ballon d'Or.
The significant date change is just one of four amendments to the format that has been introduced by France Football magazine.
Shortlist chances
The 30 men and 20 women who are shortlisted for the respective awards are usually drawn up by the journalists of France Football magazine and L'Equipe.
Going forward, the group will be assisted by Ballon d'Or ambassador and former Chelsea star, Didier Drogba, as well as the voter who has shown himself to be the most insightful in the previous edition.
For the next award, that person will be Vietnamese Truong Anh Ngoc for the men's award and Czech juror Karolina Hlavackov for the women.
A tighter voting process
France Football wishes to ensure that the voting process for the Ballon d'Or is fair but as representative of an accurate and knowledgeable result as possible.
As described here, in their own statement, tweaks have been made to ensure good quality voting.
The statement said: "Because the Ballon d'Or has gone from sixteen European jurors (1956) to one hundred and seventy (2021) spread all over the world, it can boast of an astonishing and indisputable universality.
"This is what contributes to its influence and reputation. However, is the judgement ten times finer and better with ten times more jurors? Couldn't the gigantic size of the jury end up weakening it?
"Did the openness to "small" countries (those which have neither a big natural football culture nor historical legitimacy and not always easy access to images of the main competitions) risk from time to time impacting the ballot due to lack of adequate knowledge or expertise?
"As there is no question of abandoning the founding democratic principle (all votes are equal, whatever the country), the idea is therefore to limit the jury to an "elite", to real connoisseurs. Thus, only the representatives of the first hundred countries in the FIFA rankings (and the fifty for women) will be "qualified" to vote.
"A tightening that reinforces the level of expertise and limits the (rare) fanciful votes. What will be lost in picturesqueness will be gained in legitimacy and reliability.”
Clearer rules with a three-point criteria
The organisers have sought to make the criteria for picking a winner clearer for all by highlighting three main points.
Voters should first consider individual performance and the decisive and impressive character of the contenders.
The next criteria is to look at collective (team) performance and the record accumulated during the season.
And finally, focus has been put on the class of the player and his sense of fair play.
All these changes appear favourable to a player like Salah, who alongside Europe's top goal scorer Robert Lewandowski, felt hard done by to have missed out on the last Ballon d'Or, won by Lionel Messi for a record seventh time.
