
Ballon d'Or 2023 odds: Lionel Messi early favourite ahead of Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland

The World Cup has come to a close and while it was a stunning collective effort from Argentina to bring the World Cup home, one man is catching all the headlines and that is Lionel Messi.
People seem to have decided he is now the greatest ever to do it, and that will make him the front-runner for the next Ballon d’Or award.
We’ve taken a look at the odds for the 2023 Ballon d’Or market following his World Cup heroics...
Lionel Messi
Many argued that Lionel Messi could not be the greatest of all time if he didn’t have success with Argentina and back in 2016 it looked all but said and done for him when he announced his retirement from the Argentinian national team.
Fast forward to the present day, Lionel Messi has won the Copa America and the World Cup with Argentina and now, to many, there’s no doubting his GOAT status in the sport.
The PSG forward was easily the best player in Argentina's World Cup-winning squad and whilst he may have come under a tiny bit of criticism for the majority of his goals being penalties, his impact went much further than just goals and it’s hard to measure just what he did at the World Cup with stats.
Ultimately, Messi won the Golden Ball and just missed out on the Golden Boot thanks to a Kylian Mbappe hat-trick in the final. It’s fair to say that this has been a campaign to remember for Messi and that has put him right at the top of the market for the 2023 Ballon d’Or at 2/7 with both Paddy Power and Betfair.
The Argentinian is no stranger to the award having won it seven times in the past. Noticing his achievements for his country goes without saying but on a club level, Lionel is putting up some absurd numbers for PSG.
So far this season he has played 19 games for PSG and has recorded 12 goals and 14 assists. It’s incredibly likely he wins multiple trophies in France this season which will only aid his efforts in securing an eighth Ballon d’Or next year. He comes in as a very short 2/7 favourite for the 2023 edition of the award and with the hype around his World Cup performances, you can see why.
Kylian Mbappe
Whilst the World Cup final didn’t go Kylian Mbappe’s way, his performances in Qatar were nothing short of remarkable.
You have to feel bad for anyone that scores a hat-trick in a World Cup final and fails to win, and if anyone deserved it aside from Lionel Messi, Mbappe definitely put up performances befitting a champion.
Mbappe’s World Cup heartbreak was softened by the fact he claimed the Golden Boot but the sole individual award was not what he was hoping for in terms of a haul. One award he will almost definitely win in his career is the Ballon d’Or, and for him to win it in 2023, betting sites have him priced up as the second most likely option to Lionel Messi, at 7/2.
The youngster has been a goalscoring machine ever since he burst onto the scene and this season he has recorded 29 goals and 7 assists for club and country in 32 games. Much like his teammate Messi he’s almost guaranteed a couple of trophies with PSG this season and his numbers are likely to be consistent throughout the year.
Had he won the World Cup with a hat-trick in the final, you could argue that he should be the favourite going into 2023 for the Ballon d’Or, but Messi’s achievements are likely to overshadow everybody gunning for the award.
However, there are still 12 months until the winner is announced and should he continue at his current goalscoring rate, he’s likely to be scoring 60+ goals this season.
Erling Haaland
Before the World Cup started and club football was in full flow, the player everybody was talking about was Erling Haaland. We all knew how good he was at Dortmund but in that Pep Guardiola Man City system, they seem to have unlocked a new beast.
The Premier League was taken by storm when the Norweigen first stepped on the pitch and as it stands he has 18 league goals in 13 games, plus three assists. This is offensively good. To do that in the best league in the world takes something special, it’s even crazier when you consider that Man City are not even top of the league with this monster up top.
The odds at the moment may be victim to some recency bias with Messi being 2/7 with 12 months of football yet to play. In those 12 months, Haaland could potentially score an unholy amount of goals and break every goalscoring record the Premier League has seen. The bookmakers have seen enough and have placed him at 1/6 to win the Premier League Golden Boot, some might even say that is value.
Man City are favourites for every competition they are currently in and no one would be backing them to not win any of them. If Haaland is to carry on his scoring rate and pick up a potential Champions League for Manchester City, there’s no reason he can’t win this award at 11/1.
Selected Others
The rest of the market gets pretty dicey from here with a bunch of players representing similar odds. You have the usual suspects such as Lewandowski, De Bruyne, Salah, Benzema, Neymar etc all priced at around the 28/1 mark.
In many eyes Cristiano Ronaldo is the greatest of all time and whilst the disrespect shown to him at the moment is unjustified, ultimately, he is a man without a club at the moment.
Going into the Ballon d’Or in the past Ronaldo has often been odds on without kicking a ball, this year, that is not the case. Bet365 are not frightened of the Portuguese international and have priced him at a whopping 200/1 to win the Ballon d’Or!
You never thought you’d see odds like that on a star like Ronaldo but if the rumours are true he’ll be playing his football in the Saudi league, which really does not warrant a place in the Ballon d’Or rankings.