Salah vs Benzema vs Lewandowski: Comparing the 2021/22 stats of Ballon d'Or contenders

The 2021 Ballon d’Or will be absolutely fascinating to watch.

With Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo almost certainly out of the running, football fans will get to see the first male winner outside of that star-studded pair other than Luka Modric since 2007.

However, the drama doesn’t end there, because the situation is made all the more exciting by the fact that there isn’t a clear favourite for the trophy as we enter the business end of the 2021/22 season.

Plus, we’re not that far away from having an exhaustive data set on which to make our judgements with France Football confirming this year that a series of major rule changes will be introduced in 2022.

Most notably, the judging criteria will now be based upon the previous season as opposed to the calendar year, which means that players only have a few weeks left to stake their claim on the trophy.

So, bearing that in mind, we wanted to look at the state of play here at GIVEMESPORT before some of the biggest trophies, such as the Champions League, that could inform the winner are wrapped up.

In fact, we really wanted to look at the Ballon d’Or title for the individual prize that it should be by looking at the statistics of who we consider to be the biggest male contenders in isolation.

And while personal choices for the winner might well be debatable, we like to think that it’s beyond reproach that Mohamed Salah, Karim Benzema and Robert Lewandowski are the top three candidates.

Agreed? Ok, sure, you can’t please everybody, but there’s a swelling hype surrounding Salah and Benzema right now, while fans shouldn’t forget just how incredible Lewandowski has been yet again.

And with the added bonus that all three players feature in broadly similar positions – yes, Salah