Ballon d'Or: Ranking the top 5 forwards to have won the award

#1 Lionel Messi (2009, 2010, 2011,2012, 2015)

Messi with his 5th Ballon d'Or in 2015

There was never any doubt about the two players who would top this list and the only bone of contention was who among the eternal duo of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi would be ranked highest.

The margins for classification between the pair are so small that settling on a better player is almost impossible and in many ways is down to personal preference.

Lionel Messi is unarguably the best player in Barcelona's history and the recent upsurge in their success over the last decade can be directly traced to the superhuman performance levels of the Argentine maestro.

His skillset has numerous strong points including goalscoring, excellent passing range and accuracy, vision, dribbling, shooting accuracy and when you factor in that Messi has been out-of-this-world with his freekicks of late, it can be argued that he is the greatest in the history of the beautiful game.

Messi became the first player in history to win four consecutive Ballons d'Or in 2012 and in that period, it cannot be argued that he was miles ahead of every other footballer playing.

The one sore point in his career has been his lack of success on the international scene but that takes nothing away from the spectacular career that the Rosario native has had.

Since that magical run between 2009 and 2012, Cristiano Ronaldo has closed the gap on him and Messi has won just one Ballon d'Or, but despite his success, the hunger for more achievement still remains and it would not be a surprise if he adds more personal accolades to his burgeoning collection.