Should The Ballon d'Or Be Scrapped?

By Azeez Said

Few months back, I attended a seminar and we were taught how to prepare a good resume. In the hobby section, we were told that if a person fills in 'playing chess', it means he/she can get things done with little details, if it were 'playing tennis', the person is independent and if the person loves playing football, then it means the person can work well with other people. 

That gets me to where I am going. Football is a team sport. It requires the collective effort of the 11 players on the pitch or whatever the number of player is, or as the case may be to defeat an opponent. Win or lose, the players on the pitch would be responsible for the outcome of a game even in the case of any calamitous defending, top save from the goalkeeper or genius from any of the players. 

Trophies have been designed to give recognition and serve as an award to the best team in a competition and in most cases the team gets to share any financial benefit that comes with it. Individual awards have also been included in the sport. Awards like golden boot, Ballon d'Or, to mention  but two have been given out on a regular basis.

Sometimes players now play to get all the glory to themselves in order to get one award or the other forgetting that it is a team sport. You could see a player clean through on goal with the option of squaring the ball to his team mate for a simple tap in but he hits the shot and miss and his team go on to lose the match. 

When Arsene Wenger was asked on who he thinks should win this year's ballon d'or, he had this to say "who do I want to win this year? I do not want anyone at all. I am against individual awards. This is an endorsement of an individual which goes against the essence of our sport. 

"I fight like a mad man against the award which hurts football. Unconsciously, the player is prompted to favour individual performance over that of the team." 

Do you agree with Arsene Wenger? Should the Ballon d'Or along with other individual awards be scrapped from the sport?