Ballon d’Or 2022: Messi absent from shortlist, Cristiano Ronaldo reaches lowest ranking in 17 years

Since 2008, either Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi have won the prestigious Ballon d’Or. It was only in 2018 that Croatia captain Luka Madrid got his hands on the Ballon d’Or, but it returned to Messi the following year. The former Barcelona superstar received it again in 2021, but this year, the award found a new winner in French forward Karim Benzema.
Benzema, the first Frenchman to win football’s most prestigious individual award since Zinedine Zidane in 1998, scored 44 goals in 46 games for his club as Real won the Champions League and La Liga last season.
Fifteen of his goals came in the Champions League, including hat-tricks in knockout wins over Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea, and three goals in both legs of the semi-final defeat by Manchester City.

For the first time in 16 years, neither Messi nor Ronaldo could finish on the podium at the 2022 Ballon d’Or awards in Paris on Monday. The Portuguese last won the prestigious trophy in 2017, while it was Argentina’s seventh, before Benzema held it at the Theater du Chatelet in Paris.

Ronaldo finished 20th on the 30-man shortlist, his lowest ranking at the Ballon d’Or awards in 17 years. The Portugal captain has won the award five times in his trophy-bearing career. He has made the 30-man list every year since 2004. Messi, on the other hand, could not make it to the final 30.

This is the first time since 2005 that Messi has been overlooked by the Ballon d’Or jury. Last year, he lifted the Ballon d’Or for the seventh time in November at the Théâtre du Chatelet. His absence from the final 30 comes as no surprise as the former Barca captain is having an underwhelming season with Paris Saint-Germain. He won the Ligue 1 title, but the French club crashed out of the UEFA Champions League after losing to Real Madrid in the round of 16.