“Absolutely Clueless” – Liverpool’s Van Dijk Receives ‘Bizarre’ Ballon d’Or Ranking | OneFootball

Liverpool Fans Left Scratching their Heads after Virgil van Dijk’s Ballon d’Or Ranking

The Ballon d’Or was once a prestigous award, dominated by superstars like Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and even further back to the days of Lothar Matthaus and Zinedine Zidane.

But in recent years, it has become more of a PR competition than one that values quality.

Every year there’s a few rankings that leave fans confused, but this year there seems to be a massive amount of confusion.

None more so than the ranking of Liverpool’s Virgil van Dijk. The Dutchman captained the Reds to the Premier League title and maintained his status as the best defender in the world. Where does that get him? 28th.

That’s right. According to the most prestigous player award in the sport, 27 players had better seasons than Van Dijk last season. Absolutely clueless.

For further context, the likes of Borussia Dortmund’s Serhou Guirassy (21st), Inter’s Denzel Dumfries (25th), Napoli’s Scott McTominay (18th) and Arsenal’s Viktor Gyokeres (15th) were just some of the players to bizarrely rank higher.

The veteran defender almost won the award back in 2019 and finished just seven points behind Lionel Messi that year. In all honesty, van Dijk was a worthy winner six years ago and once again he hasn’t got the ranking that he deserves.

Other Rankings

In terms of other Liverpool players, Florian Wirtz ranked 29th and Alexis Mac Allister ranked 22nd.

Elsewhere in the rankings, Bayern Munich’s Michael Olise (30th), Arsenal’s Declan Rice (27th), Man City’s Erling Haaland (25th), PSG’s Joao Neves (19th), Bayern Munich’s Harry Kane (13th) and Barcelona’s Pedri (11th) can all feel hard done by.

Liverpool will be hoping for some positive news with Mohamed Salah confirmed to be in the top 10 in the rankings. The Egyptian King will battle the likes of Ousmane Dembele and Lamine Yamal for the award, but based on the other rankings, I wouldn’t be getting too excited unfortunately.