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Jamie Carragher has doubled down on remarks he made last season about Mohamed Salah and the Ballon d'Or. It comes after the Liverpool star could only manage fourth place despite his exceptional season.
Fourth did represent a new best finish for Salah. But the 33-year-old had every right to feel that this was his best chance of taking home the top prize, after firing Liverpool to the Premier League title.
It was a record-breaking campaign for Salah, but a slower end to the season perhaps meant that recency bias counted against him, with the award instead going to Ousmane Dembele. Liverpool only lost out to PSG on penalties, but that absence from the latter stages of the Champions League ultimately played its part in thwarting the Ballon d'Or bid.
Last season, Carragher caused a stir for putting forward an alternative theory. He caused backlash by appearing to demean the significance of the African Cup of Nations, declining to classify it as a "major tournament".
Micah Richards and former Liverpool striker Daniel Sturridge were on hand to hold him to account at the time. They pointed out that if the Euros and Copa America are considered major honors (which clearly they are), then AFCON has to be in the same bracket.
Carragher later apologized for "clumsy wording". But he has consistently stuck by his underlying point, and he brought it up again in light of the Ballon d'Or results.
"I go back to something I said about Salah and it obviously caused a big storm at the time about the African Cup of Nations," Carragher said on The Overlap. "But I do feel that whether we like it or not, the biggest trophies play a part.
"So normally around a World Cup or a Euros year, whoever’s the player of the tournament more often than not would probably get the trophy."
This is worth examining before moving on. Does that pattern actually hold true?
For the World Cup, there is at least a recent trend of this happening. Lionel Messi won the Ballon d'Or in 2023 after claiming the Golden Ball at the 2022 World Cup, while Luka Modric scooped both awards in 2018.
But the trend falters before that. Messi got the Golden Ball in 2014, but the subsequent Ballon d'Or went to Cristiano Ronaldo; Diego Forlan won the World Cup's individual prize in 2010, but did not even feature in the top three of the France Football award.
As for the Euros, Rodri last year was the first player to be named Player of the Tournament and claim the Ballon d'Or since Matthias Sammer in 1996. While the likes of Antoine Griezmann, Zinedine Zidane, and Andres Iniesta have won the Euros award and subsequently made it to the top three in the Ballon d'Or, it clearly does not guarantee a win.
But in any case, no major international competitions took place last season. So however you want to class AFCON versus the Euros or the Copa America, it should not really have been relevant to Salah's bid.
Yet Carragher has claimed that the same kind of logic applies to club trophies. He has pointed to Liverpool's early exit from the Champions League as a reason for Salah's final finish.
"I think the Champions League does play a big part," Carragher explained. "I think if Liverpool beat PSG in that game [Champions League Round of 16 last season], Liverpool maybe get to the semis, maybe win it, who knows?
"[If Liverpool do that], [Salah] probably gets [the Ballon d’Or]."
This, clearly, is far less controversial. But it's apples and oranges compared to what Carragher was initially arguing.
His point last season was more like comparing the Euros to the Champions League, and AFCON to the Europa League. He does not seem to have grasped that the "storm" he caused was about an apparent belittling of Africa's continental competition.
Nobody would disagree that exiting major tournaments at an earlier point than rivals is bound to make a difference when it comes to Ballon d'Or voting. There's certainly a case to be made that the Champions League has become far too significant in determining the eventual winner, but it is a reality that winning trophies plays a big part.
The point of contention comes when a player does go far in a tournament, but that achievement is sidelined because of the perceived relevance of the competition. Even then, there is every chance that Carragher is correct to say that it happens — but it is clear that it should not.
So while Carragher is right that Salah may well have got his hands on the Ballon d'Or if Liverpool had gone the distance in Europe, it does not prove his point about AFCON. We could be looking at another case of clumsy wording.
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