The Ballon d’Or award will be presented to the winner on October 30, and the names of the 30 nominees have been already announced.
It’s an annual award given by the French magazine France Football to the best player of the calendar year, considered the highest individual recognition in football.
Manchester City midfielder Rodri, who is also among the candidates, spoke about the potential winner of this season in an interview with El Partidazo de Cope.
“Xavi [Hernandez], [Andres] Iniesta and [Sergio] Busquets missed out on it in their day,” Rodri noted.
“In the end, what you can control are the collective sporting merits. Individual awards depend on third parties and I think that footballers generally prefer collective trophies to individual ones”.
The Manchester City star made his prediction on who will win the 2023 Ballon d’Or prize.
“Who do I think will win it? I believe it will be Leo Messi,” he noted.
“If we talk about sporting merit and marketing, Erling [Haaland] also has a significant profile, and I think he has done enough to deserve it.”
The list of the 30 nominees for the 2023 Ballon d’Or are as follows:
- Josko Gvardiol (RB Leipzig and Manchester City)
- Jamal Musiala (Bayern Munich)
- Andre Onana (Ajax and Manchester United)
- Karim Benzema (Real Madrid and Al-Ittihad)
- Mohamed Salah (Liverpool)
- Bukayo Saka (Arsenal)
- Kevin De Bruyne (Manchester City)
- Jude Bellingham (Borussia Dortmund and Real Madrid)
- Randal Kolo Muani (Eintracht Frankfurt and PSG)
- Bernardo Silva (Manchester City)
- Khvicha Kvaratskhelia (Napoli)
- Nicolo Barella (Inter)
- Emiliano Martinez (Aston Villa)
- Ruben Dias (Manchester City)
- Erling Haaland (Manchester City)
- Martin Odegaard (Arsenal)
- Ilkay Gundogan (Manchester City and Barcelona)
- Yassine Bono (Sevilla and Al-Hilal)
- Julian Alvarez (Manchester City)
- Vinícius Junior (Real Madrid)
- Rodri (Manchester City)
- Antoine Griezmann (Atletico Madrid)
- Lionel Messi (Paris Saint-Germain and Inter Miami)
- Lautaro Martinez (Inter)
- Robert Lewandowski (Barcelona)
- Kim Min-jae (Napoli and Bayern Munich)
- Kylian Mbappe (PSG)
- Luka Modric (Real Madrid)
- Victor Osimhen (Napoli)
- Harry Kane (Tottenham Hotspur and Bayern Munich)
