Ballon d’Or 2018: 5 Players who should have been nominated

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The nominations for the 2018 Ballon d’Or are out. It has been 10 years since a player not named Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi has won the award, marking the start of an unprecedented duopoly. The last winner outside of the superhuman pair is Kaka, who won the prize in 2007.

It will be interesting to see if Ronaldo or Messi will be able to lift the prestigious award again, after Luka Modric won the FIFA Best Men’s Player of the Year award.

A total of 30 players have been shortlisted for the award. There were a few surprises in the final list, but here we aren’t going to talk about the players who made it, but the players who should have made it.

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#5 Edin Dzeko

Top four in the league and a semi-finalist in Europe, Dzeko has been an absolute revelation at AS Roma. He may have not been as prolific in goal in Serie A as the previous season, but he did score an impressive 29 goals for the 2017-18 campaign.

Eight of those goals came in the Champions League, including the crucial away goal that helped Roma beat Barcelona in the quarter-finals. His performances in the Champions League and the latter stages of Serie A should have seen him make it into the final shortlist.

#4 Robert Lewandowski

41 goals last season, top scorer in the Bundesliga for the third time in his career, Lewandowski may have been disappointed to not see his name among the 30 nominees.

His tally of 29 goals in the league was nearly double the number of goals scored by Nils Petersen, who was the second highest scorer in the league with 15 goals.

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#3 David Silva

David Silva had a crucial role to play in Manchester City’s record-breaking title win last season, scoring 10 goals and assisting a further 11. Silva’s evolution in the ‘number 8’ role under Pep Guardiola had reinvigorated his Manchester City career.

With Kevin De Bruyne picking up most of the plaudits last season, Silva may have been overshadowed by the Belgian midfielder, which might have costed him a place in the final shortlist.

#2 Keylor Navas

The life of a Real Madrid goalkeeper is pretty unforgiving. Fifty perfect games can be forgotten in the blink of an eye if you make a mistake at the wrong time.

Navas was voted as the UEFA Champions League Goalkeeper of the Season and was instrumental in Madrid’s third consecutive Champions League title, if that isn’t enough to make it to the Top-30 then I don’t know what is.

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#1 Samuel Umtiti

World Cup winner, LaLiga winner and Copa Del Rey champion, what more does Umtiti have to do to make it to the top-30. The central defender was France’s matchwinner against Belgium, as his flashing header powered Les Bleus into the Final.

Alongside Raphael Varane and himself, France achieved the most number of clean sheets in the World Cup (4). Umtiti was definitely the most shocking and notable absentee in the final Ballon d’Or shortlist.