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The FIFA Ballon d’Or is the biggest award a soccer player can win based on an individual performance. Every year, the best players and coaches around the world gather together to find out who is the best player, the best female player, best coach and the FIFpro World XI — the best starting line-up in the world.
A few months ago, FIFA released a 50-players list of nominees for the award so, how do we get from there to the final three nominees that traveled to the Gala in Zurich?
The FIFA Ballon d’Or was born on July 2010, when French magazine France Football and FIFA joined their awards (The Ballon d'Or and FIFA World Player of the Year, respectively) as the one global title to determine the best in world soccer.
So, since the new standard began, the final three nominees to win the prize are determined by a voting process in which captains and coaches from the 209 (this year only 207, due to the suspension of Kuwait and Indonesia) member associations. In addition to this, selected international media representatives also vote.
The exact same process goes for the nominees of Women’s Player of the Year.
First place gets five points, second place gets three, and third gets one. The votes and points are counted with help of an electronic system and done under the supervision of a notary public.
The voting for this year’s award ended on November 20, so inside FIFA headquarters they could know since then who won, right? Wrong. To avoid any chance of leaking information, FIFA hires PricewaterhouseCoopers to monitor the whole process and to record the results and keep them safe until the day of the ceremony.
The award ceremony also includes the Puskas Award, given to the scorer of the best goal in the past season, and the best XI in the globe.
The award to the best goal is selected by a voting open to every soccer fan. People can go to FIFA.com and vote for what they think was the most outstanding scoring. The three most voted make it to the ceremony and the winner is simply the one with the most votes.
To select the FIFpro XI, the voting is open only for all the players registered. The vote for each other and in the end the ones with the most votes in each position make it to the elite squad.
This is the fifth year in which Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are running for the award and it is also the first time that Brazilian superstar Neymar is nominated.
Since the new format began in 2010, Barcelona is the team that has had more nominees with 11.
Lionel Messi is the biggest winner of the Ballon d’Or with four wins. The Argentinian got one in the old format in 2009 and three more after 2010. Now he is looking to get his fifth award and he is the favorite to win it.
Cristiano Ronaldo is tied with Michel Platini, Marco van Basten and Johan Cruyff in second place of all time winners with three awards each.
This year’s nominees for Coach of the Year are Pep Guardiola, for dominating Bundesliga with Bayern Munich, Luis Enrique, for achieving five titles with Barcelona last year and Jorge Sampaoli, for taking the Chile National team to get the first Copa América in their history.
Tune into the ceremony today at 12:30 p.m. EST on Youtube.
