Since its inception in 1930, the World Cup has been widely regarded as football's greatest prize. Since 1956, and especially since it was merged with the FIFA World Player of the Year award in 2010, the Ballon d'Or has similarly been considered the greatest individual achievement in world football.
There is an increasingly unignorable inconsistency, however, with the results of Ballon d'Or voting and of international football performance. In 2010, Lionel Messi was awarded the first FIFA Ballon d'Or despite failing to score a single goal at the World Cup in South Africa before Argentina were humiliated by Germany in the quarter-finals.
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