The organizers of the Ballon d'Or awards have made crucial changes to the rules that govern the award ceremony and voting itself for the winners.
The Ballon d' Or award organizers announced that these changes would be effective from the next award ceremony. The recent development came as a result of the criticism that followed the last edition of the award ceremony itself.
These rules include:
Players To Be Judged By season, Not By Year
The previous editions of the award ceremony until the 2021 edition had players' performance been analyzed in a calendar year, usually from January till December. The recent changes would see that the best player would be awarded based on the players' performance in a football season which is from August to July.
This signifies that for the 2022 edition of the Ballon d' Or award ceremony, the Women's European Championship, which takes place from July 6 to 31, 2022, would be taken into consideration while the 2022 Men's World Cup in Qatar would not as it is set to take place from November 21 to December 18, 2022.
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The Area Of Selection
The award organizers have also indicated that the award voters should focus on the individual brilliance of the player over the collective achievement of their club or country. The third area should also focus on the overall Fairplay of the player in the football season.
Number Of Voters
The number of voters has been reduced from 170 for the men's award to 100. A total of 170 countries participated in the voting process in previous times, but this would be limited to the top 100 countries according to FIFA rankings.
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Professionals To Curate List
The award organizers had been the ones in charge of the nominee selection. Still, the would be a change in the tides as more professionals would control the selection process, one of which is the Ballon d'Or ambassador Didier Drogba.
