July 21 – The prestigious Ballon d’Or award is the latest event to be hit by the Covid-19 pandemic with this year’s ceremony cancelled, organisers France Football announced on Monday.
It will be the first time the trophy for the world’s best men’s footballer has failed to take place since Englishman Stanley Matthews won the inaugural edition in 1956.
“There will be no edition in 2020, because it turns out, after thoughtful consideration, that all the conditions are not met,” said Pascal Ferre, the editor of the magazine.
As well as leagues being totally disrupted, international tournaments such as the European Championship and Copa America were pushed back to 2021 due to the virus. The final stages of the Champions League, from the quarter-finals onwards, have also been rescheduled as a mini-tournament featuring single leg matches behind closed doors in Portugal next month.
The COVID-19 outbreak saw all major football leagues shut down in March, with the German Bundesliga the first to resume behind closed doors in May.
France Football said it would be unfair to vote on the world’s best player when some leagues, including the French Ligue 1, cancelled their seasons early.
Ferre also suggested that it would not be right to judge players based on games played without spectators present. “We believe that such a singular year cannot… be treated as an ordinary year,” he added.
“Two months (January and February), out of the eleven generally required to form an opinion and decide who should lift the trophies, represent far too little to gauge and judge, without forgetting that the other games were played –- or will be played –- in unusual conditions (behind closed doors, with five replacements, Champions League’s Final 8 played in a single game).”
“We did not want to put an indelible asterisk on the prize list as ‘a trophy won in exceptional circumstances due to the health crisis of Covid-19’. Protecting the credibility and legitimacy of such a prize also means guaranteeing its irreproachability over time.”
Lionel Messi won a record-breaking sixth Ballon d’Or last year. The separate women’s Ballon d’Or, first awarded in 2018, has also been cancelled.
Bayern Munich’s Polish striker Robert Lewandowski may well have broken the Messi-Ronaldo mould this time having reached 50 club goals this season and an opportunity to win the treble with his club.
To fill the void left by the annual ceremony, France Football magazine’s jury of 180 journalists will elect an all-time ‘Dream Team’ at the end of the year.
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