Paris (Daily Pakistan Online) It has been decided not to give the Ballon d'Or, the biggest and most prestigious football award of the year, this year due to the corona virus outbreak affecting football activities.
According to the details, the Ballon d'Or award given by France Football Magazine was first given to Stanley Mouthius in 1956 and since then it has been given to the best footballers every year. Argentina's Lionel Messi has won the award a record six times so far, while his traditional rival Cristiano Ronaldo has won the award five times, but it has been announced that the award will not be given this year.
The magazine had started giving awards to women footballers in 2018 but now this process has been stopped. Pascal Fer, editor of France Football, said in an interview that it has been a wonderful year which we like a normal year. Can't see and we started making decisions two months ago. We did not take this decision lightly but we have to admit that there will be no winner of Ballon d'Or this year because this award will not be given in a transparent manner, the rules of the game have changed due to the epidemic. So the award is impressed.
"The season started with different rules and will end with different rules. In January and February, football was played in stadiums full of spectators. After that, we have a rule of five substitutes instead of three," he said. Since then, more changes have taken place in the competition, the most important of which is the eight-team knockout format of the Champions League.
This year's Euro Cup and Copa America Cup have been postponed, so the awards would have depended mostly on performance in the Champions League, but now the event has also been shortened. In that case, the balloon race would have to be decided on the basis of performance in only three matches, namely the quarter-final, semi-final and final. "There have been a lot of changes in the rules of football, which are very accurate and we can't challenge them because of the current crisis," Pascal Fair said.
Along with all these changes, the Copa Trophy for the under-21 player and the Leo Yashin Award for Best Goalkeeper have also been canceled this year. After the Ballon d'Or and the cancellation, the FIFA awards for the best performers in each category will be given this year, but it has not been announced when and where these awards will be given.
