Messi through the ages - The Athletic

The Ballon d’Or is an annual award given to the best men’s and women’s footballers in the world. Basically, it’s world football’s MVP award.

The first Ballon d’Or was awarded in 1956, and back then was widely known simply as the European Footballer Of The Year award. It was the brainchild of Gabriel Hanot and Jacques Ferran, two journalists from France Football magazine.

Hanot was a pretty extraordinary character: he was a player, manager and journalist, and at one point he was effectively the head coach of the French national team at the same time as being editor of the sports newspaper L’Equipe. After one particularly embarrassing defeat, he basically called for himself to be fired.

Beyond that, he played a key role in introducing professionalism to French football in the early 1930s, and was the man who persuaded UEFA that the European Cup, now the Champions League, would be a good idea. It took 62 years for France Football to introduce the Ballon d’Or Feminin — until 2018.

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57y6KtnmWSobyov46bmKWkn6N6pbvRZmlpamNiuarCxGasqZyRqbK0edaipaedoqh6tbXMnmSmnaOotm60wJqjmqaUZKN6gJV%2BiHulg6K1eXuYr6KoqJ9mpJGdkZFm