I was thinking about this for awhile, and was wondering if anyone else felt that people are hesitant to award Premier League players with the credit they deserve?
Eg. Am I crazy or was Haaland not winning the Ballon D’or really disrespectful towards the Premier League?
He set the goals record, and won the treble.
You Look over the list of winners and in the premier league era only Michael Owen and Ronaldo have ever won it while playing for a premier league team.
How did Henry not win it in 2003?
I feel like now that he is dominating a much poorer league Harry Kane is finally getting the respect he deserves.
Jude Bellingham is getting bonus credit for doing it for Real Madrid.
Nothing like that per say, i think this happens to players across leagues and what matters is PR. I might get downvoted for this but Griezmann for last 1.5 seasons is as good as any player in EPL but he was 21st in BallonDor.
Owen - got lucky imo.
Henry - robbed
Lampard/Gerrarad - unlucky to be in same year as Ronaldinho
Ronaldo - deserved winner
Torres - slightly lucky, on pure merit he wasn’t the 3rd best player in the world maybe top 5 though
Suarez - he had the bad PR- like racisty guy who bites people and also didn’t play UCL. Keep in mind despite being arguably the best player in the world in 2016 he couldn’t crack top 3 ballondor even with Barca backing- so its more to do with player than the league
Messi 2018- he was 5th lol, no way.
Salah- deservedly top 3, he was never at any point the best player in the world barring few gamedays
VVD - it was the tightest ballondor imo - only lost it cos of the out of the world messi season and even then it was so tight
Haaland - same again, coinciding with something extra ordinary always creates that situation. Keep in mind Dinho lead Barca to a League and UCL double after 12 years and lost the Balondor to Cannavao in 2006
I think there has been 3 players who were the absolute best in the world in ability backed by stats at any point in time in last 23 years in EPL - Henry, Ronaldo, Suarez. EPL is more of a collection of amazing players spread across doing well in teams than the absolute best players in the world in 1-2 teams.
If you take top 10-20 players in history, I can only recall Charlton, George Best, Ronaldo who played in EPL and 2 of them played like 50 years ago. If you expand that to top 50 you will probably have like another 5-10 players as well. So that tells you so far, the absolute best players in the world don’t necessarily play in EPL - but this can change going forward considering the shift in economics imo.
The most sensible comment here. That Torres should have been Xavi, in my opinion. The Henry robbery…I may have an issue with it. Nedved was immense in every aspect for Juve, in every competition.
Henry wasn’t robbed. I’ve noticed this narrative crop up, I think as more fans who didn’t watch football then.
Nedved got 62 more points. Which is way more than Ronaldo (23), Owen (36), Figo (16), Shevchenko (36).
It was only journalists who voted at the time. Now it’s also captains and coaches of national teams.
Nedved was unreal that season. Had he not been suspended Juve would have won the CL.
I think he gets criminally underrated and as time has passed.
Henry didn’t win it because of the CL really. Arsenal didn’t get out of their second group over Ajax and Valencia whereas Nedved dragged Juve to a final.
There was also the FIFA Best Player then…players hardly won both back then. Nedved wasn’t in top 3 and I think Zidane won it in 2003 (I can’t fully remember)
I think the best in the world do play in the EPL now, most of them just play at City