{"id":125223,"date":"2024-07-22T18:51:48","date_gmt":"2024-07-22T17:51:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/uncategorized\/ballon-dor-just-a-popularity-contest-marcotti-speaks-on-favourite-to-win-award"},"modified":"2024-07-22T20:03:49","modified_gmt":"2024-07-22T19:03:49","slug":"ballon-dor-just-a-popularity-contest-marcotti-speaks-on-favourite-to-win-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sport\/ballon-dor-just-a-popularity-contest-marcotti-speaks-on-favourite-to-win-award","title":{"rendered":"Ballon d\u2019Or: \u2018Just a popularity contest\u2019- Marcotti speaks on favourite to win award"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong>Africa-Press &#8211; Nigeria. <\/strong><\/span>Popular football pundit, Gabriele Marcotti has said there are no clear favourites for the Ballon d\u2019Or this year.<\/p>\n<p>He said since Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo\u2019s dominance, it has become difficult to pick a favourite.<\/p>\n<p>He has criticized the award and labelled it a \u2018popularity contest.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>The next Ballon d\u2019Or award will be given in October in Paris.<\/p>\n<p>In contention to claim the award are Jude Bellingham, Vinicius Junior, and Rodri.<\/p>\n<p>Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have dominated the award between 2008 and 2017.<\/p>\n<p>Marcotti said on ESPN,<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is so stupid the way we all get bent over backwards on this popularity contest.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf [only] people knew the voting mechanism if they knew the people that vote on this and how some of them really don\u2019t watch much football at all.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd we\u2019re sitting here guessing, it\u2019s like the academy awards, \u2018should win\u2019, \u2018will win\u2019. I really couldn\u2019t care less. If I had a vote, and I don\u2019t, I\u2019d probably give it to Rodri or [Toni] Kroos.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor all these years with Cristiano and Messi, you really couldn\u2019t screw this up because if it\u2019s not one guy then it\u2019s the other. Now that they\u2019re gone and everybody is flawed [it\u2019s strange].\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>For More News And Analysis About Nigeria Follow Africa-Press<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Nigeria. Popular football pundit, Gabriele Marcotti has said there are no clear favourites for the Ballon d\u2019Or this year. He said since Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo\u2019s dominance, it has become difficult to pick a favourite. He has criticized the award and labelled it a \u2018popularity contest.\u2019 The next Ballon d\u2019Or award will [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":125222,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,18],"tags":[4459,14199,254],"class_list":["post-125223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-sport","tag-ballon-dor","tag-marcotti","tag-nigeria"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Ballon d\u2019Or: \u2018Just a popularity contest\u2019- Marcotti speaks on favourite to win award - Nigeria<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Popular football pundit, Gabriele Marcotti has said there are no clear favourites for the Ballon d\u2019Or this year. 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