Mohamed Salah has had perhaps his best season since coming to Liverpool, which has led to Ballon d’Or speculation throughout the Premier League title-winning campaign. That talk has faded in recent weeks and months, but Barcelona’s exit from the Champions League might just have placed him on a more even keel with some of his main rivals.
It is tricky for Salah, who in a big-picture sense clearly deserves to have won the Ballon d’Or. But the award by its nature celebrates exceptional seasons (formerly calendar years), rather than a consistent high level across longer periods.
Prior to not being nominated last time around, Salah had made the 30-man shortlist every year since moving to Anfield in 2017, an honor he shared with only Kylian Mbappe, Karim Benzema and Kevin De Bruyne. Yet despite being indisputably among the very best in the world, he has had to watch teammates Virgil van Dijk and Sadio Mane achieve higher finishes than he has ever managed.
For a long time, this looked as though it might be Salah’s season. Even by his own standards, he began at a blistering pace, form which continued into the new year.
But Liverpool had the misfortune of drawing PSG in the first knockout round of the Champions League, despite having topped the league phase. Alisson’s heroics were not quite enough, and the single most important element in a Ballon d’Or campagin slipped away from Salah.
An FA Cup exit and defeat in the League Cup final ensured that Salah would finish the season with only one trophy, albeit a big one. And even his personal numbers have slowly started to tail off, although he will still end on record-breaking figures.
However, while winning the Champions League is always a good start for Ballon d’Or recognition, it is not strictly a requirement. And Salah may have just received a big boost, with Barcelona also exiting the tournament.
Had Hansi Flick’s side gone all the way, it would have been hard to look beyond Lamine Yamal or Raphinha. They are on course for the La Liga crown, and have shone in Europe too.
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But now, like Salah, they will end the season with only one of the truly significant prizes, assuming Barcelona can see things out in La Liga. And when it comes to raw numbers, the Liverpool man is still right in the mix with the duo.
Yamal, for all the justified excitement, has 17 fewer goal contributions than Salah. That isn’t the be-all and end-all, but you get the feeling that his precocious talent will produce plenty more deserving campaigns in the future. Raphinha, in fairness, is posting Salah numbers. The Liverpool star has one more goal in all competitions, but the Barcelona man has two more assists.
But there is precious little to split them, and you would think that Salah’s talismanic role in helping Arne Slot to a debut title would count for something. He is unfortunately competing with the recency bias of voters, but Barcelona’s absence from the Champions League final will offset that a little.
The natural next question is whether any of the players who have reached the Champions League final are in the mix. At the moment, Inter is the only side to have booked its place. Its brilliance has been built mainly on the collective. Lautaro Martinez has been prolific in the Champions League, but Salah has more goals than the Argentine has goals and assists combined in all competitions.
Perhaps there could be a defensive candidate, like Alessandro Bastoni, but Inter’s success has not been based on an especially mean defense. After all, it toppled Barcelona in the semi-final despite conceding six goals over the two legs, and it has the leakiest defense in Serie A’s top five.
Speaking of Serie A, Inter looks as though it might have lost its grip on the league title. Napoli has taken a three-point advantage with three games to go (although there is the tantalizing prospect of a one-off playoff match for the title if they finish level on points, as their head-to-head record is identical).
So it’s necessary to look to the other side of the Champions League draw. PSG beat Arsenal 1-0 at the Emirates, so it is the favorite to progress to the final.
It might provide the biggest challengers to Salah. In particular, Ousmane Dembele looks like a legitimate candidate.
Dembele has matched Salah on 33 goals for the season, something none of the others have done. He lags behind on assists, but his importance in the Champions League campaign will be hard to overlook if the French side goes all the way.
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It’s hard to imagine too many other options from PSG. Next-best priced by the bookmakers is Gianluigi Donnaruma, who has made some huge saves in the tournament, but a goalkeeper winning the award would be a major rarity.
The best hope for Salah might be if Arsenal stages an unlikely comeback to reach the final ahead of PSG. Even if the Gunners were to win the Champions League, there are no standout Ballon d’Or candidates.
Would it be Declan Rice? His free-kick brace against Real Madrid is exactly the kind of thing that would hold far too much sway in the voting, but it’s hard to see him winning it.
Other than that, maybe William Saliba could enter the conversation at a big stretch, with Arsenal holding the league’s best defensive record. But he’s not a real threat to Salah.
Interestingly, the bookies still make Yamal and Raphinha the favorites, despite Barcelona’s exit. Dembele would be my one to watch, and he’s priced third, with Salah in fourth.
It’s an award Salah would dearly love to claim, so it’s a shame it still looks some way off. But he should at least stand a good chance of getting his best ever Ballon d’Or finish — and if he sends a few more records tumbling in his final three games, he may yet be able to capitalize on Barcelona’s elimination.
