In early September, France Football magazine will announce a shortlist of 9 candidates for the 30 Ballon d’Or title. However, according to Marca, this year’s award will be a race of a few names including Lionel Messi, Erling Haaland, Kylian Mbappe and Rodri. Among these, the Spanish news site rated Messi as the No. 2023 candidate.

“Based on his performance at the World Cup, Messi is the No. 1 candidate for this year’s title,” Marca said.

Marca and 90min both believe that Messi, Haaland, Mbappe and Rodri are the top 4 candidates for this year’s Ballon d’Or title

The British media also shared the same opinion as Messi. Some sources also put Messi’s winning rate up to 83.3%. Foot.Var also claims that Messi owns a 75% chance of winning the Ballon d’Or this year.

Some sources said Messi’s chances of winning the Ballon d’Or this year have reached 83.3%

If he continues to be honored, Messi will own the 8th Golden Ball in his career, 3 more titles than the 2nd ranked Ronaldo. However, Messi said he was not too interested in the Golden Ball.

“I’ve said many times that the Ballon d’Or doesn’t matter to me. What’s important to me are collective trophies. I’ve been lucky to win everything in my career and after the World Cup, I don’t care even more about the Ballon d’Or. If I have the Ballon d’Or, that’s fine but if I don’t, it’s not a problem,” Messi revealed.

This year’s Ballon d’Or was decided based on the votes of journalists from around the world. Each person will choose the top 5 excellent players. The No. 1 position corresponds to 6 points descending to four, three, two and one in the next rankings.

The winning player is the one with the highest total score. The final results were announced during the awards gala on October 30.