France Football announced on Friday the list of nominees for the prestigious Ballon d’Or award.
The list included 30 candidates, and the Argentine star, Lionel Messi, player of the French team Paris Saint-Germain, who won the award last season, was absent.
This is the first time since 2005 that Messi has not been nominated for the award he has won 7 times.
Also missing from the list was the Brazilian Neymar, Messi’s colleague at Paris Saint-Germain.
Among the candidates on the list is the Egyptian Mohamed Salah, the English star of Liverpool, who last season shared the top scorer in the English Premier League.
The list also included the French Real Madrid striker Karim Benzema, who is the favorite to win the award after a wonderful season with his team, during which he scored 44 goals in 46 games, and helped the team win the domestic league titles and European Champions for the fourteenth time in its history.
Other candidates include Manchester United striker Cristiano Ronaldo and Manchester City striker Erling Haaland, who has just joined from Borussia Dortmund.
Among the candidates is also the Belgian Kevin De Bruyne, the Manchester City player, who is among three candidates for the European Footballer of the Year award for the 2021-2022 season awarded by the European Football Association, which he competes with Karim Benzema and Thibaut Courtois.
The list also included Senegalese Sadio Mane, the German player from Bayern Munich, who moved from Liverpool, and the Polish Robert Lewandowski, the Spanish player from Barcelona, who moved from Bayern Munich.
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