Real Madrid are better than any other club at helping their players win the Ballon d’Or, according to director of France Football Pascal Ferre.
Karim Benzema is widely expected to pick up the 2022 award when the winner is announced on Monday, which would see him follow the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Luka Modric in securing the individual prize while at the La Liga club.
While Lionel Messi is a seven-time Ballon d’Or winner, and has almost exclusively shared the award with Ronaldo over the past 15 years, no club has had more different players voted as the best in the men’s game than Real.
France Football are responsible for the 30-man shortlist and while five Real players are nominated this year, Ferre believes that president Florentino Perez is careful to ensure his club have one clear star in the team.
“Florentino Perez orchestrates the campaigns well,” Ferre told the EFE Agency.
“There are machines like Real Madrid that are very strong. Their intelligence is that they support a single player. For years it was Cristiano Ronaldo and now it’s Karim Benzema. That prevents the votes from being dispersed.
“They know how this works. It’s no coincidence if it’s the club that has won it the most times.”
For the first time since 2005, Messi has not been nominated for the Ballon d’Or while Ronaldo is on the shortlist but is not likely to be a serious factor in the voting.
Ferre believes it is an award that means more to players than any other, but warned the next generation of football stars that they have a long way to go before they are ready to take the baton from Messi and Ronaldo.
“In 2019 [Messi] told me that he had forgotten the feeling of pleasure that came from winning it, he had realised that he missed it,” Ferre said.
“The Ballon d’Or is Messi and Messi is the Ballon d’Or. It is a very important award for them. The Ballon d’Or is one of the few things that cannot be bought. That makes them humble in the face of this type of reward, it makes them children.
“There is a lot of talk about the rivalry between Mbappe and Haaland, but neither of them has won the Champions League. At Mbappe’s age, Messi already had two Ballon d’Ors. If they want to establish a similar rivalry they have to start winning big trophies already. Messi and Ronaldo didn’t take so long.”
