Ballon d’Or Shortlist Unveiled: All The Usual Suspects Plus Light Smattering Of Total Frauds

Chris Wright

24th, October 2016

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It’s that time of year again. The annual creep towards the Ballon d’Or gala officially begins today with the announcement of the 2016 long-short-list.

For reasons of their own, award administrators France Football decided to leak the list in five-player increments over the course of the entire day, milking the whole thing for all it was worth.

As per the French publication, here are the 30 hopefuls in question (in alphabetical order):

  • Sergio Aguero (Man City)
  • Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (Borussia Dortmund)
  • Gareth Bale (Real Madrid)
  • Gianluigi Buffon (Juventus)
  • Cristiano Ronaldo (Real Madrid)
  • Kevin De Bruyne (Man City)
  • Paulo Dybala (Juventus)
  • Diego Godin (Atletico Madrid)
  • Antoine Griezmann (Atletico Madrid)
  • Gonzalo Higuain (Juventus)
  • Zlatan Ibrahimovic (Manchester United)
  • Andres Iniesta (Barcelona)
  • Koke (Atletico Madrid)
  • Toni Kroos (Real Madrid)
  • Robert Lewandowski (Bayern Munich)
  • Hugo Lloris (Tottenham)
  • Riyad Mahrez (Leicester City)
  • Lionel Messi (Barcelona)
  • Luka Modric (Real Madrid)
  • Thomas Muller (Bayern Munich)
  • Manuel Neuer (Bayern Munich)
  • Neymar (Barcelona)
  • Dimitri Payet (West Ham)
  • Pepe (Real Madrid)
  • Paul Pogba (Manchester United)
  • Rui Patricio (Sporting Lisbon)
  • Sergio Ramos (Real Madrid)
  • Luis Suarez (Barcelona)
  • Jamie Vardy (Leicester City)
  • Arturo Vidal (Bayern Munich)

The long-list will be shaved down to five and then a final three by December time – so… Messi, Ronaldo and N.E Other once again in all probability.

Of course, it didn’t long before the highly discerning brats of Twitter had outed absolutely everybody on the Ballon d’Or list as a fraud…

Who’ll win? Who cares?