Football In 2024: A Call Back To The Pre-Lionel Messi And Cristiano Ronaldo Age

2024 is perhaps the first year of football in a long time where it's hard to pick out one singular standout moment of the year. 2023 saw Manchester City lift the treble, 2022 was Lionel Messi's ascent to immortality, 2021 was Italy's Euro triumph, and before that, we did not have to look past Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo to find a standout. But in 2024 - for the first time in years - the standout thing was that there wasn't a standout moment.

And perhaps the best way to signal the fact that there wasn't a standout was the fact that neither Messi nor Ronaldo made it into the Top 30 of the Ballon d'Or nominees. The award they couldn't stop winning at one point had finally moved on for good.

Football in 2024 saw surprises. Perhaps more than we're used to. Bayern Munich no longer won the Bundesliga, dark horses Spain won the Euros, and a defensive midfielder won the Ballon d'Or. For good heavens, Ivory Coast won the Africa Cup of Nations after sacking their manager mid-tournament!

And what a ride that was. Ivory Coast barely scraped through to the knockouts in an AFCON on home soil. Their manager was sacked midway and the collapse couldn't look more calamitous. Neither could the comeback look more glorious than it ended up being. 'The Elephants' beat everyone in the knockouts, including then-defending champions Senegal, to claim a historic AFCON in their own territory.

What about Bayer Leverkusen? Not only did they dethrone the seemingly undethronable, they went invincible. Zero losses in 34 Bundesliga games. Zero losses in the German Cup. And were it not for a freak Europa League final defeat, it'd be zero losses all season. Xabi Alonso at the wheel, Florian Wirtz in the hole, Leverkusen were the team of the year.

Let's come