The Global Scoreboard: How Ballon d’Or Rankings Became a Geopolitical Power Play
Every October the same ritual: chartered jets full of super-agents, sheikhs, and streaming-service executives descend on Paris like well-dressed locusts to find out whose shin bones are officially the most valuable on Earth. The Ballon d’Or rankings have dropped again, which means it’s time for the planet to pretend that a subjective beauty pageant for…