A report has demonstrated that Lionel Messi’s Ballon d’Or success this week was actually far less close than the voting system suggested.
The Argentine was revealed as having been selected as the world’s best for 2012 on Monday evening, having been officially awarded 41.60 per cent of the vote, ahead of Cristiano Ronaldo’s 23.68 per cent for second place.
However, Sporting Intelligence have put FIFA’s voting system through its paces and concluded that the Argentine’s margin of victory was far greater than that.
In the current system, the captain and Coach of every national team and a selected journalist from each country votes for a top three, with their first choice receiving five points, second receiving three points and third receiving one point.
Sporting Intelligence list that this system means that Messi can only ever receive an absolute maximum vote of 55.55 per cent of the votes, if every one of the 509 voters placed him as first choice.
However, counting just the number of first-place votes each player received, Messi’s 303 first places – worth 1515 points – against Ronaldo’s 86 first places – worth 430 points – hands the 25-year-old a 59.53 per cent share of the votes, against the Portuguese’s second place 16.90 per cent.
