France Football announced last Friday, a real revolution concerning the method of designation of the Ballon d’Or. The magazine explained in particular that the size of the jury will be drastically reduced since only the 100 countries best ranked in the FIFA rankings will now have a journalist authorized to vote.
If we take into account the FIFA ranking of last month, this would mean at the moment T that only 21 African journalists would be authorized to vote during the next edition (see the list below) against fifty previously. Of course, this number will change between now and then since countries like Madagascar (102nd), Kenya (103rd), and Sierra Leone (107th) can for example join the world Top 100 while others will leave it.
To justify this decision, FF considered that there is a kind of causal link between the relevance of the journalist’s vote and the FIFA ranking of the country from which he comes. The weekly thus described “small countries” as “those which have neither a big natural football culture nor historical legitimacy and not always easy access to images of the main competitions”. A decision that will inevitably be controversial…
The 21 African countries authorized to have a voting journalist (March 2022): Senegal (18th globally), Morocco (24th), Nigeria (32nd), Egypt (34th), Tunisia (36th), Cameroon (38th), Algeria ( 43rd), Mali (48th), Ivory Coast (51st), Burkina Faso (56th), Ghana (61st), DR Congo (66th), South Africa (68th), Cape Verde (73rd), Guinea (81st ), Gabon (82nd), Benin (83rd), Uganda (84th), Zambia (88th), Congo (97th), Equatorial Guinea (99th).
Ousmane CAMARA