Anwar Ibrahim (Cairo)
After closing the voting door to choose the winner of the Golden Ball for the current year 2021, which is awarded by France Football magazine to the best player in the world, it has become very difficult to predict or predict who will win it from the stars, in light of the presence of more than one strong candidate to win it, unlike the seasons. In which the award was settled, either for the Argentine Lionel Messi, or for the Portuguese Cristiano Ronaldo for more than ten years.
The circle expanded to include new stars, most notably the Polish Robert Lewandowski, Bayern Munich’s top scorer, who was deprived of his bad luck from winning it last year, due to the withholding of the award caused by the outbreak of the Corona virus, which caused the irregularity of the various leagues in Europe.
There is also the Italian star Jorginho, the Chelsea star who won the Champions League and the Azzurri national team, the Euro 2020 champion, in addition to the French Karim Benzema, the Real Madrid player who won with the “Rooster” team in the European Nations League, and the Egyptian Mohamed Salah, the Liverpool player, in addition to the two young stars Kalyan. Mbappe of Paris Saint-Germain, and Erling Halland of Borussia Dortmund, which intensified the competition for the prize, and the difficulty of predicting who would win it.
The greater the secrecy regarding the outcome of the vote, determining the winner, and arranging the candidates selected from among the 30 players, according to the points obtained by each of them, the more the desire to leak the result from the “control” also increases, before the official date of its announcement on November 29.
The leak sometimes comes from within the French magazine itself, as a photo of the winners’ arrangement was spread on social media, printed on one of the magazine’s papers, and issued by Robert Lewandowski’s name, and even specified the number of points he obtained “627 points”, while he came in second place in the paper. The printed, Lionel Messi, followed by Karim Benzema in third place, then Mohamed Salah in fourth place, and Jorginho in fifth place.
The “leaked” ranking sheet showed the star Cristiano Ronaldo in ninth place, while Mbappe and Erling Haaland came in sixth and eighth places, while Chelsea’s N’Golo Kante came in seventh, and Belgian Kevin De Bruyne of Manchester City came in tenth place.
As for the positions from the eleventh to the twenty, they were occupied, respectively, by Gianluigi Donnarumma, the goalkeeper of Saint-Germain, Luka Modric, the midfielder of Real, Chiellini, the defender of Juventus, Harry Kane, the top scorer for Tottenham, Bruno Fernandes of Manchester United, Robin Diaz of Manchester City, Romelu Lukaku, the top scorer for Chelsea, and Pedri, the player. Barcelona, St Germain striker Neymar, and Riyad Mahrez, the City winger.
Press sources closely related to the award administration stated in the French magazine that it is illogical to consider this arrangement final, because it is likely that it was a non-final “draft” of the result, and this will be revealed by its announcement on time at the end of November, although the thing that is likely to be correct is Writing the order with the number of points each player obtained, for example, but not limited to, Benzema got 526 points, Salah got 412 points, and Jorginho 197 points, and the line in which Messi’s name was written, was crossed out in full, including the number of points , which may mean the possibility of other modifications, between now and the date of the announcement of the winner.
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