Ballon d'Or : Who's gonna take it home this time ?

Ballon  d'Or , the individual award in football given annually given by FIFA to the best male performer in the previous calendar year. It is awarded based on the votes from national team coaches and captains, as well as journalists from around the world. The award started in 2010 after France Football's Ballon d'Or and the men's FIFA World Player of the Year award were merged. The winner of the inaugural 2010 FIFA Ballon d'Or was Lionel Messi who then went on to reclaim the title the following two years.The award has been dominated by Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo as part of their ongoing rivalry. As of 2014, Ronaldo is the most recent recipient of the FIFA Ballon d'Or, after beating Messi and Manuel Neuer to the 2014 award.So who's going to get his name on the shinning trophy this year ?

The battle for the top player is among the La Liga trio Lionel Messi (Barcelona, Argentina), Cristiano Ronaldo (Real Madrid, Portugal) and Neymar Jr. (Barcelona, Brazil). While Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have made it a habbit of reaching final three in the list each year, Neymar Jr. has made his first of hopefully many appearances in the final three contender list for the gorgeous golden trophy. All three of them enjoyed stellar performances on the pitch in the year 2015, but trophy will be awarded to the one with most impressive and effective performances.

So analyzing the statistics and breaking down the performances into numbers, we try to compare the top three contenders.

 

Goals comparison

Its Cristiano Ronaldo who leads the goal scoring tally among the three with 57 goals in the year 2015 followed by Messi and Neymar who netted the ball 52 and 45 times respectively. Ronaldo also boasts of better goal to minutes ratio , finding back of the net with ball every 88minutes which is better than Messi's 101 minutes/goal and 116 minutes/goal for Neymar. But Messi managed 26 assists in previous calendar year which 9 more than both the Portuguese Ronaldo and Neymar Jr with 17 assists each. Messi and Neymar also won the treble last season with their club FC Barcelona and also won the UEFA Club world cup. This stat takes the Catalan club duo ahead of Real Madrid's Ronaldo.  Also Messi took his national side(Argentina) to the finals of the Copa America almost single handedly. Messi also had a very significant role in Barcelona winning UEFA Champions league title as he scored twice against Bayern Munich in the semi final, taking his club to the finals.

Neymar Jr. was a revelation in last season and is now considered heir to the Ronaldo-Messi esque football in the future.

Three times Ballon d'Or winner Cristiano Ronaldo had a comparatively dry season in terms of trophies but he found himself on scorecard more offenly than anyone in Europe.

Name	Goals	Assists	Minutes-goal ratio
Lionel Messi  (FCB,ARG)	52	26	101
Cristiano Ronaldo (RMA,POR)	57	17	88
Neymar Jr.      (FCB,BRZ)	45	17	116

Statistics

So tonight, the world will get to know the winner of the Ballon d'Or 2015 in a ceremony held in Zurich. But the real winners are the spectators round the globe who enjoyed watching these players of such high pedigree. So, I personally want to bestow my respect to all three finalists and to those also who didn't made it to final three but gave their best every time they stepped on the pitch to play the beautiful game of FOOTBALL.