Forecasting Ballon d'Or 2018 Voting Results

Step 3 of forecasting - Impact of the other 20 shortlisted players

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Now, we need to see how well the other 20 players who were not involved in the FIFA Football awards 2018 will sway the voting. They are - Agüero Sergio, Alisson Becker, Gareth Bale, Karim Benzema, Edinson Cavani, Thibaut Courtois, Roberto Firmino, Diego Godín, Isco, N’golo Kanté, Hugo Lloris, Mario Mandzukic, Sadio Mané, Marcelo, Neymar, Jan Oblak, Paul Pogba, Ivan Rakitic, Luis Suárez and Sergio Ramos.

Many of these players like Neymar, Kante, Pogba, Aguero and Cavani has the flair to sway votes in their favour and it is this uncertainty that makes Ballon d'Or 2018 unpredictable, but surely not enough to replace Luka Modric from the top position.

Luka Modric had 694 points as per our previous stage analysis. While Cristiano Ronaldo had 430 points. You can expect a reduction of around 20-25% (100 points) in points for Ronaldo considering the recent allegations which will reduce his tally to around 330 points.

Now let’s assume the worst case scenario to take down Luka Modric considering he will receive 694 points exactly.

• The Full reduction of 100 points from Cristiano Ronaldo tally goes to the next serious contender - Kylian Mbappe raising his tally of points to 390 (290+100).

• Out of the 168 journalists voted for him in the first 3 preferences, there were only 67 journalists. Now let’s assume the other 101 journalists rate him at fourth preference slot of weightage 2 points. This will give his tally a boost of 202 points taking his final score to 592 points.

This is still more than 100 points below the score attained by Luka Modric.