Robert Lewandowski robbed of Ballon d’Or

Fifty-one goals in 43 matches across competitions this season, and counting. That really should just about say it all for Bayern Munich’s Robert Lewandowski’s in the running for the ballon d’Or, but France Football has decided that they will not be selecting a recipient for the honor this year on account of the long break in play caused by the coronavirus pandemic. In a statement, they claimed that the pandemic made it impossible to reach a fair judgment. “How can one compare the incomparable?” they opine.

Of course, France’s Ligue 1 season was cut short due to the pandemic. Ligue 1 nonetheless crowned Paris Saint-Germain champions, but France Football would presumably argue that Kylian Mbappé unfairly could not complete his domestic season. France Football adds, “We did not want to put an indelible asterisk on the winner’s list to the effect that the ‘trophy (was) won in exceptional circumstances due to the Covid-19 health crisis.’”

They go on to state, in all earnestness, that “Protecting the credibility and legitimacy of such an award also means ensuring its irreproachability over time.” Because clearly no one, let alone any French Bayern player who won a treble in 2013, has ever questioned the legitimacy of the criteria by which the Ballon d’Or has been awarded.

This time around, Lewandowski was in the running with Barcelona’s Lionel Messi and Juventus’s Cristiano Ronaldo after securing another domestic double with Bayern and helping them advance to the knockout stages of the Champions League.

The Polish international scored a league best of 34 goals in the Bundesliga, a competition high of 6 goals in the DFB-Pokal, and he currently holds the top tally of 11 goals in the Champions League. He’s literally the top scorer in every competition he’s involved in this season, and no other in Europe’s top five leagues has scored more than 50 goals this season.

Not that it technically matters, either, but this is the best individual scoring season he’s had in his career, and it just so happens to be a scoring record that happens to be more prolific than anyone else in world football right now. This is also the fifth consecutive season in which Lewandowski has scored at least 40 goals across all competitions. But you be the judge of that.