Former Ballon d'Or voter: my 2018 ballot was reversed

Lassana Liburd, a journalist from Trinidad and Tobago and former Ballon d'Or voter, recently spoke to Italian outlet Fanpage.it about the Ballon d'Or selection process. He recalled an incident in 2018 when his voting order was reversed. Luka Modrić ultimately won the Ballon d'Or that year.

Liburd stated that judges were required to rank their top five players in descending order, but France Football published his votes in reverse order.

In 2018, Lassana Liburd posted on social media that his Ballon d'Or ranking had been recorded incorrectly: "My voting order should have been Messi, Modrić, Ronaldo, Salah, and Griezmann."

However, the officially published voting ranking for Trinidad and Tobago was as follows: Griezmann, Salah, Ronaldo, Modrić, Messi.

He said in a recent interview: "I'm not entirely sure how I spotted the error, but the final published results were in the exact reverse order of what I submitted. First, ranking from highest to lowest seems very natural to me. Second, the organizers explicitly asked us to fill it out that way. So this error really confused me."

Liburd revealed that after he raised the issue with France Football, they immediately apologized and attributed it to human error. He admitted he couldn't be certain whether similar errors had occurred with other voters that year or whether they might have affected the final outcome. However, as no other judges had reported similar issues, he was willing to believe it was simply an accident.

Regarding the Ballon d'Or selection criteria, Liburd believes that shifting the evaluation period from a calendar year to a football season and no longer considering a player's overall career achievements are positive changes that create more opportunities for emerging players.

However, he also pointed out that the current selection process places too much emphasis on team honors. He said: "A brilliant player on a good team has a much lower chance of winning this award than a player who performs well for a top team. In my opinion, this is unfair and contradicts the original purpose of the award. The Ballon d'Or should recognize the best player in the world, not just the best player on the best team."

Furthermore, Liburd disclosed that eligibility to judge the Ballon d'Or is now tied to FIFA rankings, with only representatives from countries and regions ranked in the top 100 eligible to vote. Trinidad and Tobago has not met this threshold for most of the past seven years, so he will not serve as a judge this year.