Ballon d’Or 2022: How Champions League success impacts voting for France Football’s annual award

Three of the top four contenders for this year’s Ballon d’Or remain in the Champions League at the quarter-final stage. Karim Benzema, Robert Lewandowski and Mohamed Salah will all be looking to reach the semi-finals with Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Liverpool respectively, although Kylian Mbappe and Paris Saint-Germain are already out.

Ad/> The quartet lead the way with the bookmakers, but the odds will likely change before France Football hand out the award, this year determined by the 2021-22 campaign in its entirety as opposed to the calendar year. Premier LeagueMum claims Ronaldo ‘assaulted’ her son when slapping phone in anger10/04/2022 AT 07:44 That will be the case going forward as well, although the Ballon d’Or has tended to take into account the full season prior anyway, with major international tournaments also swaying the outcome.

But exactly how important is the Champions League? We delve a little deeper into two lists to see whether success in Europe is required to collect the Ballon d’Or. Ballon d’Or winners + Champions League outcome Firstly, the list of Ballon d’Or winners since 2000, and how they fared in the Champions League that year the final took place, including the team they played for at the time: 2000: Luis Figo (Barcelona/Real Madrid) – Champions League semi-finals (with Barcelona) 2001: Michael Owen (Liverpool) – Not in Champions League 2002: Ronaldo (Inter/Real Madrid) – Not in Champions League (with Inter) 2003: Pavel Nedved (Juventus) – Champions League runners-up 2004: Andriy Shevchenko (AC Milan) – Champions League quarter-finals 2005: Ronaldinho (Barcelona) – Champions League last 16 2006: Fabio Cannavaro (Real Madrid) – Champions League last 16 2007: Kaka (Milan) – Champions League