Ronaldo and Messi to take a seat on panel of recent Ballon d’Or award

The pair will type half of a 33-man panel who will decide the sport's outstanding up-and-coming young player
Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi will type half of a panel that can vote on a new award added to the Ballon d’Or family this year: the Trophee Kopa.

Named when Raymond Kopa, the legendary Reims, Angers, Real Madrid and France striker, who won the inaugural Ballon d’Or in 1958, the award can visit the game’s outstanding young player aged underneath twenty one.

Ronaldo and Messi, though, will not be alone on a panel of illustrious talents. Joining the try can be all the surviving Ballon d’Or winners, from Luis Suarez, the oldest winner still alive, to the Juventus and Barcelona stars, who have monopolised the individual award for a decade

Furthermore, there will be a Ballon d’Or equivalent for female players.

This prize has been welcomed by France international Wendy Renard, who plays for Lyon and could be a Champions League winner.

“The birth of the Ballon d’Or Feminin is a step additional for the evolution of our sport,” she told France Soccer. “It’s a discovery. Ladies’s soccer is evolving and inequality is shrinking, even if there is still area for improvement.”

Meanwhile, Marta, one in every of the most recognisable feminine players of the last decade, added: “I’ve perpetually needed to determine a woman win this prestigious award. It’s a leap forward towards quality to determine such a prize.”

It will be a panel of journalists specialising in ladies’s soccer around the world who can vote on the winner, using the identical system that is in place for the lads’s game. A longlist of thirty players will be on the market for the award on October eight, the same day because the male Ballon d’Or candidates are created known.

The award will additionally be presented on December three, along with the Kopa Trophy and therefore the Ballon d’Or itself.