The winner of this year's Ballon d'Or will be a forward. Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar are the three finalists, and it's impossible to quibble with any of their credentials. Two of them are the most brilliant players of our generation, and the third is an outrageously talented potential successor, who is improving by the year.
The presence of forwards or attacking midfielders on the short list for football's top individual prize is not exactly a crashing shock. Only four players who don't fall into that category have won the award since it was introduced in 1956: Lev Yashin (1963), Franz Beckenbauer (1972 and 1976), Matthias Sammer (1996) and Fabio Cannavaro (2006), and only the latter won the FIFA World Player of the Year, awarded from 1991 to 2010 before it merged with the Ballon d'Or.