Oviri Kelvin, Sports Editor, Abuja
The organiser of Ballon d’Or, L’Equipe, has announced four new changes to the rules for selecting the winner of the accolade which will come into effect in the next edition.
These changes to pick the winner of the Ballon d’Or are by season and not by year; specialists to put together the lists; Fewer votes; Criteria.
L’Equipe has changed the timing of the yearly assessment of players’ performances from January to December, to season’s performances from August to July.
With these changes, those who will vote in the next edition will take into account the Women’s European Championship which takes place from July 6 to 31, 2022 but certainly not the men’s World Cup whose date is out of the stipulated timeline, The Trumpet gathered.
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Following, specialists are now to select the 30 candidates, 20 for the Yashin Trophy and 20 for the Kopa Trophy as against the now abolished way where the editorial staff of France Football and L’Equipe were the ones mandated to do so. With this change, the likes of Didier Drogba who is Ballon d’Or ambassador, and voters who came close to getting the last edition’s results right will be included in the specialists’ list for the next edition.
More so, the organiser has also reduced the number of voters by accepting representatives from only the top 100 countries in FIFA ranking and top 50 in women’s football ranking as against the 170 countries that participated in the last edition.
However, the fourth change had to do with the criteria which specifically centers on the player’s individual performance and not the collective performance of the club and also the player’s ability and sense of fair play.
