Lionel Messi Early Favorite To Win Ballon d’Or 2020 Despite Lockdown, Odds Show

Six-time Ballon d’Or winner Lionel Messi is once again the early favorite to win the most prestigious individual award in soccer.

The whole world is in lockdown, and the biggest leagues are on hiatus. However, none of these will stop the prestigious Ballon d’Or from being handed out next fall. The French Football award has been around since 1956, awarding the best soccer player on the planet. Messi and Portuguese icon Cristiano Ronaldo are the heavy favorites once again for the award, having won it for most of the last decade. In fact, only Luka Modric ended the Ronaldo-Messi Ballon d’Or streak in 2018.

For this year, Messi and Ronaldo have a quite interesting set of competitors. Sensational players from Premier League such as Kevin de Bruyne and Sadio Mané both cemented their names as contenders for this year’s Ballon d’Or award. Paris Saint-Germain star Kylian Mbappe is also included in the list top chasers.

Experts speculated that the judging for the award will be a bit interesting this year. With all the top five leagues in Europe delayed and international competitions being moved to next summer, it is highly expected that the hiatus will take a huge portion of the judging out of the equation.

Check out the odds taken by Sports Betting Dime on April 10 below.

Lionel Messi (+225)

Cristiano Ronaldo (+400)

Kevin de Bruyne (+500)

Kylian Mbappe (+600)

Sadio Mane (+800)

With two Premier League stars included in the top five, there’s a possibility that the Ballon d’Or will go back to English football. The last Premier Leaguer to win the award was Michael Owen in 2001 for Liverpool.

Last year, Virgil van Dijk seemed poised to be the first defender to take home the award since Fabio Cannavaro in 2006. Van Dijk helped Liverpool win the Champions League and UEFA Super Cup and led the team to a record amount of points in the Premier League. However, the Dutchman fell short against Messi, who earned his sixth Ballon d’Or in the process.

Messi’s sixth Ballon d’Or award added more fire into his decade-long rivalry with Ronaldo. It will be remembered that Ronaldo was off to a hot start and was still doing good before the lockdown. But pundits speculated that Ronaldo’s impressive performances were fueled by Messi winning the prestigious award. Ever since Messi won the 2019 Ballon d’Or, no other player scored more goals than Ronaldo across all European leagues.