In the end, it might have turned out exactly the way we expected it to, with Lionel Messi scooping the award for the best player in the world. However, not everyone had the wisdom to see it. We look at top 7 most insane nomination by national team coaches, captain and journalists.
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The Ballon d’Or award is decided with the captains and coaches of the national teams registered with FIFA voting for their top three players in the world, alongside journalists from 209 countries.
While the majority picked Lionel Messi, others made some truly bizarre picks. Here are seven of the most inexplicable nominations for the prestigious award:
1. Roy Hodgson leads the charge
Roy Hodgson has never been the ‘conventional’ man when it comes to his choices. The English manager has been ridiculed in the past for his choice in the Ballon d’Or, having chosen Javier Mascherano of FC Barcelona last year as his number one player.
While he was more conventional this time in choosing Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo as his top two, Roy was at it when he chose to pick Eden Hazard as his third best player in the world.
The same Eden Hazard who has not scored for 30 odd games, now.
2. Scottish Captain wants more from Messi
Lionel Messi may have won his 5th Ballon d’Or, but, he clearly needs to do a lot to win over Scottish captain Scott Brown.
Brown was impressed by the exploits of Robert Lewandowski, Cristiano Ronaldo and Thomas Muller. But none of the FC Barcelona players make it to his list, forget Lionel Messi.
Real Madrid fans have a new cult hero?
3. Vanuatu captain’s choice sure to inspire Hogdson
Hodgson may have gone conservative this time, but the Vanuatu captain more than made up for him. Masauvakalo Fenedy decided to chose Paul Pogba, Thomas Muller and Alexis Sanchez as his top three. Quite a lovely range of choices, there.
Winning six trophies is clearly not enough to get you in everyone’s list, FC Barcelona players.
4. Pakistani coach fancies Robben
Arjen Roben has one big fan in Pakistan’s head coach Basheer Al Shamlan Mohammed Shamlan Mubarak. He nominated the Dutchman as his top pick, the only one to do so. Wonder what Mr. Mubarak was thinking, given that the Bayern winger had played only 26 games this past season. Now, now, don’t make yourself a laughing stock at the Ballon d’Or too, Pakistan..
5 . Kompany’s Belgian bias
Vincent Kompany is known to be a total team man. The Belgian captain ensured that he did his bit for his team mate by nominating Hazard as his best player for 2015.
Also, Togo’s Belgian head coach Tom Saintfiet voted for De Bruyne as the best player for 2015.
Roy Hogdson is starting to appear very, very sane to me the more we look at some of the votes.
6. Wales, Africa following in the Belgian’s footstep
The Welsh, much like the Belgians above, were too much in love with their own. Gareth Bale was the number one choice for both, manager Chris Coleman and captain Ashley Williams, despite having a rather sub-par year given his high standards.
The Africans also followed more or less the same trend. 14 off the 18 votes Yaya Toure got were from his African counterparts. Wonder what Yaya now feels having blasted them off in the African Footballer of the Year ceremony for rightly voting for Aubameyang.
7. Messi, Ronaldo round it off
Well, it is expected that the duo will not name each other for the award. Ronaldo went for his team mates Gareth Bale, Karim Benzema and James.
Messi, meanwhile, went for Luis Suarez as his number one, followed by Neymar and Andres Iniesta.