The weirdest votes for the 2018 Ballon d'Or | OneFootball

As you’re probably aware by now, Luka Modrić won the 2018 Ballon d’Or at a ceremony in Paris on Monday evening.

The prestigious gong is voted for by 176 journalists from around the world, each of whom choose five players and award six, four, three, two or one points based on their order of preference.

Modrić ultimately won with a landslide 753 points, a whopping 277 more than second-placed Cristiano Ronaldo.

The votes of each individual journalist have now been made public, and some of them are downright bizarre.

For starters, the journalist representing Kyrgyzstan thought Thibaut Courtois was the world’s best footballer this year. The Belgian may well have been named the best goalkeeper at the World Cup this summer but come on.

Less outrageous but still slightly odd votes saw Karim Benzema – who scored just five league goals last season – pick up six points from the Central African Republic, while Grenada’s correspondent went for Sergio Agüero, for some reason.

Despite being the only player of the 30 nominees to win the Champions League and the Ballon d’Or in the same year, Real Madrid and France’s Raphaël Varane only took top spot in India, El Salvador, Surinam and Luxembourg.

Meanwhile, Somalia plumped for Luis Suárez, while the top five for Saint Kitts and Nevis was Neymar, Sergio Ramos, Suárez, Alisson and Agüero, in that order.

There were also a few examples of journalists voting against their nations’ own interests.

For example, Lionel Messi was only fifth on the list in Spain and third on the list in his native Argentina, while the Belgian representative didn’t name either Eden Hazard or Kevin De Bruyne in his top five.

Predictably, Messi picked up no votes in Brazil whereas Serbia – a country which shares a strong rivalry with Croatia – rather admirably voted for Modrić.

The best man undoubtedly won in the end but it’s difficult not to feel like some of the daft votes mentioned above undermine the whole process somewhat.

But our faith in the system has been partially restored by the fact that the inaugural Kopa Trophy awarded to the best U21 player in the world is voted for by former Ballon d’Or winners, and they all voted unanimously for Kylian Mbappé.