Ballon D'Or Recap: Messi Wins Eighth, Bonmatí Wins First

Hi all 🙂

We’ve got a great issue for you today. One of the biggest events of the year took place last night. We all know and (sometimes) love it: The Ballon D’Or Ceremony. It was a night of first-time winners, records breaking, and angry Ronaldo fanboys tweeting “we still didn’t go to the MLS at 35”.

We, of course, are going to break down all of it for you. But first, as always, here’s your FRONT THREE. 

Cue dramatic news music

Also, in honor of such a big occasion, every section of today’s issue will end with “D’Or”. It’s simply the least we could do.

The Front Three D’Or

Sheffield Wednesday owner asks for money from fans. Yesterday the Championship club’s owner Dejphon Chansiri asked fans to raise £2 million to address financial issues. Here’s what’s going on:

• The Football League imposed a registration embargo on Sheffield Wednesday due to the club facing sizeable debts.

• Chansiri mentioned "cashflow" problems and claimed this issue is prevalent worldwide, promising to repay the funds from supporters with interest.

• Sheffield Wednesday faces the risk of a lengthy transfer ban if debts are not paid by November 10, 2023. The club is already nine days into a "persistent default".

• Chansiri has had a prickly relationship with the club’s supporters for a while, previously stating that he would stop providing additional funding for the club.

• EFL regulations stipulate that accumulating 30 days of breaches in a year can result in a ban from registering new players for three transfer windows. Chansiri urged fans to contribute £2 million before November 10th to avoid these penalties.

Many people were appalled by Chansiri’s request, saying that it came across as a guilt trip from a billionaire owner trying to avoid spending money on the club he bought. 

Scotland need to LOSE to qualify for the Olympics? The Scotland Women’s Team’s Olympic Qualifying group has created a truly bizarre situation. It took us a while to wrap our heads around it, but this is the gist:

• Scotland and England are both in Olympic Qualifying Group A1. Here is the current table:

• According to the rules, Team Great Britain’s qualification for the Olympics solely relies on where England finishes in the group since they are the highest-ranked international team out of themselves, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

• If Great Britain qualifies, then all four teams (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland) will form a combined squad for Team Great Britain, meaning that there will be some Scottish players who have a chance to be selected.  

• However, this is the current situation: there are two games left in the group and England sit in third place. For Team Great Britain to qualify, England must beat the Netherlands by more than one goal and then beat Scotland (Belgium also must drop points in at least one of their last two matches). 

• This situation also strangely means that in order for Scotland to go to Paris, (assuming England takes care of business vs. the Netherlands) they would have to lose to the Lionesses in the group’s final match. 

What. The. Hell. 

Player misses match due to computer bug. Spain defender Irene Paredes missed her 100th appearance with the national women's team due to a computer glitch.

• The computer error prevented Paredes from being added to Spain's official match squad, which meant that the Spanish soccer federation couldn't update the game squad in UEFA's official application, causing confusion.

• Amaiur Sarriegi, who had been dropped due to injury, appeared on the official squad list despite not being available.

• After the match, Spain coach Montse Tomé said that she was “told about [the glitch] at the hotel" and that she "had to adapt to the situation” by going with a different eleven. 

The 2023 Ballon D’Or Ceremony: A Recap…D’Or

Does anyone else feel like talking about the Ballon D’Or? Because we do. 

Let’s talk about the Ballon D’Or. 

Last night, Lionel Messi won his eighth, while Aitana Bonmatí picked up her first. But that was only a fraction of what happened last night.  

Let’s start from the beginning: the red carpet. 

Scenes from the Red Carpet

This isn’t a fashion newsletter, so I’ll save the player fit reviews for another day. However, here are a few of our favorite moments.

• Messi and Aitana sharing a moment on the red carpet: 

• David Beckham arriving on the scene, probably thinking about how he can use the night as another excuse to talk about how “he signed Messi” to Inter Miami.

• And finally, Messi on his way out, sending the media scrambling:

In honor of this being such a fancy occasion, I changed into my finest tuxedo before writing this. We keep things classy here at Today FC. 

Cameraperson Steals the Show

Whoever the cameraperson was during the ceremony, they definitely had a sense of humor. First, they cut to French national team manager Didier Deschamps and Kylian Mbappe when showing a video of Emi Martinez’s crucial save of Randal Kolo Muani’s shot in last year’s World Cup Final. 

Unsurprisingly, Deschamps spoke to ESPN Deportes outside of the ceremony, and gave them this gem of a quote: 

“The Argentinians [say that Messi is the best of all time]. He is one of them, but it is difficult to say that Messi is better than Cristiano Ronaldo or Kylian Mbappe, who is younger.”

But the fun didn’t stop there. When Bellingham was asked onstage about his two goals during El Clásico, the camera cut to none other than Barcelona’s shot-stopper, Marc André Ter-Stegen. 

It’s safe to say that whoever was operating the camera will forever go down in the annals of Football Twitter, and I’m sure they and their coworkers had a laugh about it over drinks afterward. 

The Hardware

Now for the meat and potatoes. Here’s everyone who took home awards:

She didn’t get an award last night, but massive shoutout to Spain’s Salma Paralluelo for finishing third in the Women’s Ballon D’Or final rankings. The Barcelona player is a former track star who has just recently decided to go all-in on football and she’s had a great year to show for it. One of the individual highlights of her year was scoring a beautifully clutch go-ahead goal in extra time of their World Cup quarterfinals match against the Netherlands. 

Onto our grand prize winners. 

Here’s what this win means for Messi:

• He extends his lead at the top, winning a record EIGHTH Ballon D’Or.

• The Argentine becomes the second-oldest player to ever win the award. English legend Stanley Matthews is the oldest, winning it at 41 years old back in 1956.  

• I had to sneak this in here being an American, but Messi is the first MLS player to win the Ballon D’Or, which I honestly never thought I’d see. “Retirement league”, my ass. 

Trivia time. NO CHEATING. Excluding Messi, eight other players have won the World Cup, Ballon D’Or, and Champions League/European Cup in their careers. Can you name them all? Reply to this email with your answer. 

SPOILER ALERT: We put the answer at the very bottom of this issue. 

And now, Aitana Bonmatí - here’s what the win means for the newly crowned world champion:

• It’s Bonmatí’s first win, and the third in a row for the Spanish Women’s National Team (Alexia Putellas won in 2021 and 2022)

• This is her fourth major individual honor of the year after winning the World Cup Golden Ball, UEFA Player of the Year, and the Champions League Player of the Season. In short, her win was somehow more of a foregone conclusion than Messi’s was. 

• She’s the youngest winner of the award on the women’s side since Ada Hegerberg won at 23 in 2018. 

Both players made great speeches, and we’ve included links to both below:

Messi's speech

Aitana’s speech

Here’s how Ronaldo fans reacted to Messi’s speech:

Full Time D’Or. Thanks so much for spending another Wednesday with us. We don’t have a golden ball to give you as a token of our appreciation, but we did put together a list of some other great stuff that we think you’ll like. 

Take care ❤️

More Good Stuff D’Or 👍

Swiss Team FC Basel failed to score a goal during October, and thus, were forced to announce that there would be no goal of the month 😳

Translation: No goals in October = no goal of the month

Someone captured a video of Galatasaray Striker Maurio Icardo handing out candy to kids in his neighborhood on Halloween night 🎃 

YouTuber Thogden made a great video on a club with one of the best fanbases in India, Kerala Blasters 🔥

Trivia answer: Franz Beckenbauer, Gerd Müller, Paolo Rossi, Zinedine Zidane, Rivaldo, Ronaldinho, Kaká, and the late Sir Bobby Charlton.

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