Salah can expose Carragher and other Ballon d’Or bigots in 2026 after Dembele victory.
“Is it time for football to be fair?” asked Egypt boss Hossam Hassan in a tardy attempt to guilt-trip the 100 journalists from the top 100 FIFA-ranked nations into voting for Mohamed Salah as their Ballon d’Or winner Monday.
Former teammate and ex-Tottenham striker Mido later made the very same suggestion of impartiality among the decision-makers, urging them to “be fair to him just for one time and make it happen this year”.
If this was indeed an award based upon “hardships encountered”, the “size of the challenges you overcome” or the positive consequences of an African footballer winning the gong for the just the second time after George Weah in 1995, then sure, give it to Salah.
But the Ballon d’Or has never been, nor will ever be about that. It’s based on three main criteria: individual performances, team achievements and fair play. Winning the Premier League while scoring 29 goals and claiming 18 assists was brilliant, but it was never going to be enough.
His bid ended when he failed to score in either of Liverpool’s last 16 Champions League games in defeat to Paris Saint-Germain. Without an Africa Cup of Nations to vie for, he had to win the biggest club competition.
The talisman of the team who wins that gong ordinarily claims the greatest personal prize. And so it proved again, as Ousmane Dembele pipped Lamine Yamal to top spot, with PSG teammate Vitinha claiming third spot and Salah behind him in fourth.
Salah can truly put the impartiality and perceived prejudices of those football journalists to the test in 2026. Anything like his weight of goal contributions for Liverpool in another Premier League title win and Champions League victory and he would be nailed on.
But assuming he wins the former and not the latter, leading Egypt to Africa Cup of Nations glory this winter offers an opportunity for Salah to put pressure on those who discriminate between major global tournaments, like Jamie Carragher.
“I think the problem is the fact he’s with Egypt,” Carragher said when assessing Salah’s Ballon d’Or chances back in February. “And he’s probably not playing in the major tournament as such, or maybe got a great chance of winning, I think it’s either the Champions League or the major tournament. Normally, the player who excels in that.”
Carragher was immediately put in his place by both Daniel Sturridge and Micah Richards in the Sky Sports studio, and then several others in quite the social media backlash against the Liverpool legend and his Euro-centric assertion.
And while we know we’re asking a lot of Salah to continue scoring and assisting at the same rate as last season, particularly in a new-look Liverpool side in which that burden looks set to be shared among the raft of absurdly gifted forwards Arne Slot now has at his disposal, we really hope he can, while keeping to the very specific guidelines of winning the Premier League, winning the Africa Cup of Nations and not winning the Champions League.