Ballon d'Or: 11 of the strangest nominations for the individual award

Liverpool‘s Luis Diaz is one of 30 players to be nominated for the 2022 Ballon d’Or.

The Colombian winger is one of six players from the Merseyside club to receive the honour this year, along with Mohamed Salah, Virgil van Dijk, Fabinho, Darwin Nunez and Trent Alexander-Arnold.

Diaz spent the first half of the 2021/22 season at FC Porto, where he scored an impressive 14 goals in 18 league games.

He then joined Liverpool in the January transfer window and was pretty good for the Reds in the latter parts of the campaign, although he only managed four goals in 13 Premier League outings.

So, was Diaz worthy of a Ballon d’Or nomination over the likes of Thomas Muller, Toni Kroos, Alisson Becker and Andrew Robertson? Most probably not.

Here’s how some football fans have reacted to the news:

The discussion over Diaz’s Ballon d’Or nomination on social media prompted us to take a look at some other strange ones from the 21st century.

Here are 10 more to feast your eyes on…

The man once tipped as the ‘next Zinedine Zidane‘ was nominated for the 2009 award after helping Bordeaux to an unlikely Ligue 1 title triumph in 2008/09.

It’s safe to say Gourcuff didn’t live up to the hype, though. The attacking midfielder flattered to deceive for much of his playing career and retired from the sport back in October 2020.

Cris, who younger football fans may never have even heard off, was nominated for the Ballon d’Or in consecutive years.

Part of Lyon’s dominant side in the early 2000s, the defender received a grand total of zero votes for the award in both years.

Remember him, Portsmouth fans? Before he was flopping on the south coast, Olisadebe was in the running for the Ballon d’Or after scoring seven goals in World Cup qualifiers for