Benzema, Salah, Ronaldo: Who is favourite to win the 2022 Ballon d'Or?

The Ballon d’Or revealed their 30 nominees for the top male prize on Friday evening.

France Football’s revered accolade has been given a new lick of paint this year with a renewed focus on individual performance; a reduction on the number of journalists voting and a switch in what’s being judged from the calendar year to the club season.

As such, it was fascinating to see which players would be in contention to take home the famous golden trophy lifted by the likes of Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo Nazario and Johan Cruyff over the years.

And the results certainly didn’t disappoint because it looked until the very last minute that neither Cristiano Ronaldo nor Lionel Messi would feature despite the pair winning 12 of the last 13 editions.

In the end, Ronaldo did indeed join the list of nominees on the back of a strong individual season at Manchester United, but Messi remained absent despite his historic haul of seven Ballon d’Or gongs.

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That alone is incredibly juicy within the context of football’s premier individual prize, never mind when you consider that Rodri, Thomas Muller and Thiago Alcantara were also conspicuous by their absence.

Marry that to the inclusions of Luis Duiz, Antonio Rudiger, Phil Foden, Darwin Nunez and others leaving fans to chat amongst themselves and you quickly see that it was an enthralling year for nominees.

But now we finally know who’s officially in contention to win the Ballon d’Or, who are actually the frontrunners to take home the prize and who doesn’t stand a cat in hell’s chance?

Well, fear not, ladies and gentlemen, because after ranking the 30 nominees ourselves, we decided to take a more objective look at how