The Ballon d’Or is as dumb as it ever was

Luka Modric and Ada Hederberg won Ballons d’Or on Monday, but the award remains as meaningless an honor as it has always been.

Let us revel, for a moment, in the sheer, unbridled stupidity of the Ballon d’Or. The Ballon d’Or — not to be confused with The Best FIFA Football Awards, which was itself formerly known as the FIFA World Player of the Year Award, before it was combined with the Ballon d’Or to become the FIFA Ballon d’Or, and then ultimately un-combined to leave us with two unwanted prizes for the price of one (keep up) — has been awarded by France Football to the best male player in the world every year since 1956.

This was the first year the magazine has also handed out a prize to the best female player in the world, which auspicious occasion will now be remembered primarily because the event’s host, Martin Solveig, used the opportunity to ask the winner, Lyon and Norway striker Ada Hederberg, if she could twerk, proving once more that sheer, unbridled stupidity is no defense against sheer, unbridled misogyny.

Hederberg handled the situation exactly how you would expect a successful female athlete to respond to such slimy ass-hattery, somehow both sternly and politely at the very same time, as if, indeed, she has been putting deftly up with this shit for years.

Not to be slowed down by its own regressive social views, France Football soon after gave the men’s award to Luka Modric, the first player other than Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo to win the prize since Kaka in 2007.

Modric is a wonderful player, one of the finest of his generation. He has also, at least according the creeping tide of digital idiocy that daily threatens to submerge us, spent much of his career toggling between underrated and underrated’s slightly more high-profile cousin, under-appreciated. Which really is a remarkable pair of things to be for a player who has won three Champions Leagues in a row playing central midfield for the biggest team in the world. One wonders what criteria we are using to determine a player’s level of appreciated-ness. Watching him play clearly isn’t one of them.

This is of course our new reality, where players are judged not according to how they play but whether or not their body of work ticks the sufficient narrative boxes, which this year seem to be, above all, “not Messi or Ronaldo” and “played well at the World Cup.” The problem isn’t that Modric isn’t deserving of such a prize; it’s that the very concept of desert has been so completely undermined by the advent of these prizes as to have become completely meaningless.

It’s not just Modric, either. And it’s not even the fact Lionel Messi, who was Europe’s top scorer last season with 45 goals from what was essentially a midfield position and led (dragged might be more to the point) Barcelona to a league and cup double, was fifth. Fifth! It’s no single thing. It’s the whole, ludicrous pie.

Take, for a comparatively non-controversial example, Karim Benzema. Benzema scored three goals in the Champions League knockout rounds last season, two of which were literally handed to him by opposition keepers. Marcelo, who is a left-back, also scored three goals in the Champions League knockout rounds last season, none of which were literally handed to him by opposition keepers, and added three assists. Benzema finished two places higher than his Brazilian teammate. Here are some other players who finished behind the Frenchman: Roberto Firmino, Ivan Rakitic, Sergio Ramos, Sadio Mane, Isco, Diego Godin.

There are only two explanations for this: Either a significant number of people assumed Benzema played for France at the World Cup or … no, that’s the only explanation.

In conclusion, the Ballon d’Or is as stupid this year as it has been every other year of its stupid, many-named existence. And somehow adding a women’s prize has only made it more misogynistic. Chapeau!