Despite Zhou Yi's achievement of becoming a final three candidate, a historical feat for Chinese and even Asian football, everyone still hoped he could win the highest honor.

Many even harbored the thought that Zhou Yi's performance last season was simply godlike, leading his team to the Bundesliga title in terms of honors and completing a league three-peat, and even hoisting the Champions League trophy.

Such remarkable achievements and dazzling results represented the best opportunity in Zhou Yi's career. This wasn't even a major tournament year like the European Cup or the World Cup. If he couldn't win this time, who knew when the next chance would come?

Frankly speaking, many Chinese fans still lacked confidence in Zhou Yi. Although he was still young, everyone felt that entering the final list this time was like stumbling upon a stroke of good luck, and such good fortune might not always favor Zhou Yi.

Since it had appeared, they should seize it; otherwise, the opportunity would be lost.

But reality was often cruel. It wasn't as if you were guaranteed an award just because you had achieved enough honors.

Many people harbored such concerns, and the reason they did was that there had been similar precedents.

The 2010 FIFA Ballon d'Or selection was the first year of the merger between the FIFA World Player of the Year and *France Football* magazine's Ballon d'Or. It was also a World Cup year.

The final three candidates for the FIFA Ballon d'Or that year were Iniesta, Xavi, and Messi.

There was no need to look at the final result. Just looking at the list of three candidates, anyone who truly understood football could see the problem, because in this voting process, where only the top three could enter the final list of candidates, Dutch midfielder and Inter Milan's core player, Sneijder, was absent!

In European club football that year, Inter Milan was the biggest winner. Mourinho led the team to the Serie A title, the Italian Cup, and the Champions League, becoming the first treble winner in Serie A history. The team's core player, Sneijder, was the key figure in the team's treble success, and his performance was outstanding. In the various awards for the best player in the European season, Sneijder edged out Barcelona's Xavi and Bayern Munich's Dutch compatriot Robben to become the best midfielder.

In national team competitions that year, Sneijder's good form continued. He and Robben led the Dutch national team all the way to the World Cup final in South Africa, the best result for the Dutch national team in the World Cup after the 1978 World Cup in Germany. Especially in the match against the title favorite Brazil, Sneijder's performance was perfect. With Brazil leading in the first half and the situation looking good, Sneijder stepped up and used two goals to complete the reverse comeback against Brazil, sending Kaka back to Brazil and himself marching all the way to the final.

In the final, the Netherlands and Spain were locked in a stalemate until extra time, when they were finally defeated by Iniesta's goal. Nevertheless, Sneijder's performance in that World Cup was perfect. Five goals and one assist, Sneijder used these statistics to tell everyone that he was the core and leader of the Dutch national team. He also won the Silver Ball Award and the Bronze Boot Award at that World Cup.

His performance in both club honors and national team appearances was excellent, a showing that was arguably on par with Zhou Yi's. Because of the added weight of national team matches, it might have been even more convincing than Zhou Yi's achievements.

But such an outstanding player, at the peak of his career, couldn't even make it into the top three in the voting… Wasn't that ridiculous?

The FIFA Ballon d'Or was a merger of the former FIFA World Player of the Year and *France Football*'s Ballon d'Or, so the voting was also a simple and crude addition of the two voting methods, without considering the weighting. *France Football*'s journalist voting method and FIFA's national team coach + captain voting method were simply added together, but the number of national team coaches and captains was significantly higher than the number of media journalists, so their votes would be much greater than those of the journalists. Their choices would determine the final result, and the journalist voting, known for its authority, became a mere accompaniment.

In the voting process, it could be seen that Sneijder had the highest journalist voting rate, with 7.7 percent of the journalist votes, but Sneijder's voting rate among national team captains and coaches was not as high as his final top-three competitors, at 3.79 percent and 3 percent respectively.

In the final total voting rate, Sneijder had 14.48 percent, ranking fourth. And Messi, who ranked first in this category, had a total voting rate of 22.65 percent, but the media voting rate was the lowest among the top four, at 4.38 percent.

He relied on the votes of the national team captains and national team coaches, with 8.55 percent and 9.72 percent respectively, significantly ahead of the other three.

FIFA's voting system has always been criticized as unprofessional, a stark contrast to *France Football*'s Ballon d'Or voting system in those years.

Some people may find it strange: national team coaches and captains should be professional, right?

A player's professionalism is reflected in their football skills, but not necessarily in their all-around understanding of football.

It could be said that a national team captain's understanding of the world football landscape might not even be as good as that of a Chinese fan who can't even play football well.

Not to mention the coaches and captains of those small and weak footballing nations. For example, how much understanding of world football can you expect from the coach and captain of the Tonga national team? Their football intelligence may rely more on media reports, so the stars who often appear in the media are naturally the people they are most familiar with, such as world-class superstars like Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.

When they need to vote, they don't know anything about the other candidates at all, so they just pick the names they recognize. People like Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo naturally have an advantage.

FIFA currently has 209 member countries, and each member country's national team coach and captain have the right to vote, which is equivalent to 418 votes. And the media judging panel for the Ballon d'Or? Only 53 authoritative media outlets are qualified to vote.

Even if all 53 media journalists chose Sneijder, it would not be able to overcome the 418 votes for Messi.

Thus, under such a bizarre voting rule, Sneijder, the best-performing player in 2010, was disgracefully not even in the top three...

Before the final results were released, the top three alone caused a great deal of controversy and questioning.

When the final results were released, almost all media outlets were dissatisfied. If Sneijder didn't make it into the top three and wasn't eligible to participate in the final competition, fine. Looking at the remaining three, shouldn't Xavi or Iniesta, who led the Spanish national team to the World Cup title, have a greater chance and higher qualification than Messi to win the award?

But no, Messi won the final FIFA Ballon d'Or!

At the time of the announcement, Messi himself was surprised and unexpected. He didn't really think he was qualified to win the award.

In a World Cup year, performance in the World Cup is of great reference value. Messi's performance in the World Cup was not comparable to that of Xavi and Iniesta. He didn't score a single goal in the South African World Cup, and the Argentine national team he led was also slaughtered by the German team. How could such a performance be worthy of the Ballon d'Or?

But who told him to be the most popular world-class star in the media in recent years, even hailed as the third king of football?

High media exposure, his name frequently appearing in various reports, everyone who knows football knows Messi, so he has an advantage in voting...

In this way, Messi controversially won the highest award in player personal honors that year, the FIFA Ballon d'Or.

Because there was no so-called European Ballon d'Or to compete with FIFA, Messi was the one who stood at the top of all professional players in the world that year.

This was definitely unfair. In terms of Messi's strength, he was certainly one of the best players in the world, but in terms of his performance in 2010, he should not have surpassed Sneijder to win this award.

But many years later, when people look up the winners of the 2010 Ballon d'Or, they will only see Messi's name, and many people may not know the story behind it. They will naturally think that Messi won the Ballon d'Or that year because he performed best that year and received official recognition.

If such a thing could happen to Sneijder, the core player of the football powerhouse Netherlands, why couldn't it happen three years later to Zhou Yi, the core player of the weak football nation China?

You know, Sneijder even won the treble, while Zhou Yi didn't even win the treble.

The only thing they could hope for was the authority and fairness of the European Sports Media Alliance journalists, hoping that they could make choices that matched their professional evaluations and authoritative status.

But some people also worried, at this critical juncture, would there be any possibility of racial discrimination? Racial discrimination has always been very serious in football. In the media dominated by Europeans and Americans, there are also more or less such problems, and their prejudices against China are more than less. Just think of the London Olympics that just passed last year, which was simply a teaching case of European and American media discriminating against Chinese sports.

Would some journalists think that Chinese players are not worthy of this honor, not wanting to see Chinese players also get a share of the pie in football, and choose to vote for Messi or Ribéry?

As the results were about to be released, the Chinese fans, who had been feeling inferior in the football world for a long time, were particularly sensitive and fragile in their hearts...