I never met John Charles, Giampiero Boniperti and Omari Sivori, or even saw them play—they were all well before my time—but I feel as though I know them intimately.
I spent the majority of Sunday mornings during my childhood in the basement with my dad watching Serie A games. Bright and early, he would get up and turn on the TV to the weekly match being televised, and settle into his easy chair to watch the action unfold. I’d head to the kitchen and quickly pour myself a bowl of cereal before taking it downstairs and sitting on the couch next to my dad’s chair, and we’d watch the game together.
Dad was pretty patient with me back then, answering my questions without a hint of annoyance as he tried to watch. He could tell I was interested in soccer, and he wanted to foster my brewing passion for the sport.
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“Who are those guys in the black and white stripes,?” I asked.
“That’s Juventus,” he replied. Turns out Juve was my dad’s favourite team, which meant they became my favourite team. Whenever their games aired on TV, he would regale with tales of following the Bianconeri as a youngster growing up in southern Italy.
I found out that John Charles was a hulking but classy midfielder from Wales known as Il Gigante Buono – The Gentle Giant; that Giampiero Boniperti was a lethal goal scorer who could play a number of attacking positions; and that Omari Sivori was a master dribbler, Serie A’s answer to Stanley Matthews.
I learned so much about soccer and its rich history from my dad on those Sunday mornings—about the World Cup, about icons such as Pele and Di Stefano, about legendary teams and memorable matches. And the funny thing was, not once did my dad ever mention the Ballon d’Or.
A heartfelt congrats to Cristiano Ronaldo on winning the Ballon d’Or earlier this week. You can tell from the genuine emotion he showed that the honour meant a lot to him, and the heartwarming moment he spent on the stage with his young son showed us a side of the superstar athlete that we rarely see.
But does the award really matter? Do we really need the Ballon d’Or to confirm what most people already know—that Ronaldo is the best player on the planet? Surely the fine folks at FIFA, and the hundreds of national team coaches and captains, and journalists from around the world have better things to do with their time.
It’s hard to see the value in an award that has only ever been given to one goalkeeper (Lev Yashin in 1963) that disproportionally favours goal scorers and creators, and all but ignores generals at the back (Paolo Maldini and Franco Baresi, two of the greatest defenders of all-time, never won it), and whose voting process leads to some laughable ballots (Javier Mascherano? Really, Roy Hodgson?). And Hodgson was just the tip of the iceberg—countless voters didn’t have both Ronaldo and Messi in their top three.
It’s also telling that when France Football magazine launched the Ballon d’Or in 1956 that it was only open to European players who plied their trade in Europe. South Americans and players from the rest of the world needn’t apply.
Decades of Euro-snobism went on unabated until 1995 when France Football changed the rules, opening up eligibility (somewhat) to any player regardless of nationality, provided they played for a European club. It was only in 2007, after decades of an insular European policy, that players from around the world became eligible. How charitable.
Where’s the harm in the Ballon d’Or? There isn’t any, I suppose, except the assault on common sense, and it being a waste of time.
Arguments are made that the Ballon d’Or is important because future generations must know who the best players of their respective eras were.
That’s a reach. Pele and Diego Maradona never won the award (they were never eligible). That didn’t seem to hurt their legacy or lead to questions about their places in history. Does anyone dispute they’re the two greatest players of all-time? Likewise, Brazil didn’t win the 1982 World Cup, but that side, to this very day, is still regarded as one of the best teams ever.
Winning a World Cup isn’t a sign of greatness in a player (See World Cup non-winners: Messi, Ronaldo, Platini, Di Stefano, Eusebio and Cruyff). Neither does winning the Ballon d’Or.
The truth is that we’re all anthropologists, and we record history in our own way. We Tweet. We post to Facebook. We upload videos to YouTube and Vine. We Instragram.
And we partake in the sport’s great oral tradition, where fathers and mothers tell their sons and daughters about the good old days, like my dad did with me.
That’s how the true history of the game lives on and is passed on to future generations—organically through storytelling, and not by some superfluous trophy and garish award ceremony in Zurich.
John Molinaro is Sportsnet’s chief soccer reporter. Follow him on Twitter