Mane, Ronaldo, Benzema, Messi: 2022 Ballon d'Or contenders ranked

The race for the 2022 Ballon d’Or is over.

At least, that’s what the new rules implemented by France Football back in March suggest with the coveted title now set to be informed by performances over a season as opposed to a calendar year.

As such, now that the champagne and confetti of Real Madrid‘s Champions League triumph have petered out, we now – in theory – have all the data we need to be able to judge who’s going to take home the title.

So, as we await more information on when and how France Football are going to proceed with their new-look Ballon d’Or, we wanted to assess the lay of the land and ponder who deserves the title the most.

To do that, we’ve decided to use our trusty medium of Tiermaker to rank every player considered to have at least a 50/1 chance of winning the trophy on SkyBet at the time of writing into various categories.

Each and every touted candidate will be placed in one of ‘Absolutely no chance’, ‘Seismic shock’, ‘Outside chance’, ‘Genuine contender’ and ‘Deserving winner’ based on the opinion of yours truly.

If our pick for the winner and wooden spoon aren’t the same as yours, then that’s A-OK, it’s a completely subjective matter and we’d love to find out about your picks across our social media channels.

But first, let’s dive into how we think the bookies’ favourites for 2022 Ballon d’Or glory rank and rate by walking through the different categories down below:

Harry Kane, Erling Haaland, Phil Foden, Virgil van Dijk and Neymar

Look, with all due to respect to these players – who are all world-class and could easily win the Ballon d’Or one day – there’s not a chance in hell that they’re getting anywhere near the golden football this year.

Kane ultimately had an average season by his lofty