On Jan. 12, 2016 a historical event was held at Swiss Chirii Congress House. One of the top soccer players in the world, Lionel Messi, won his fifth Ballon D’or award of his career. Various opinions about whether Lionel deserves this award circle around soccer enthusiasts within the GSIS community.

Dash Lee believes that Lionel Messi deserves the award, “I love it because I personally like Lionel Messi and he is my favourite soccer player.” Dash explained that Messi was his favourite player because “he is not selfish, he makes plays, he passes a lot and he also makes the goal.”

Jun Park, a ninth-grade student, said Lionel Messi “really deserves it [the Ballon D’or award]” since “he won second place in the world cup.”

“He had an amazing season with Barcelona, he won the club world cup and scored a lot of goals” he added. “Even though he is short, he is dedicated to the ball and his dribbling skill is amazing.”

Harry Cho, also feels that Messi deserves the award, “Lionel Messi’s respectable plays on the soccer field let soccer fans know that he is good.”

“He deserves it [the Ballon D’or] because he won a lot of awards last year,” says Brandon Lee, a tenth-grader, “I think some other people who deserve the Ballon D’or are Ronaldo and Neymar.” Brandon added, that he does not think they are more deserving or better than Messi, which is why “Lionel Messi deserves the Ballon D’or the most.”

“I think he is a very different player compared to all the other players; even other outstanding players like Ronaldo and Neymar or the other sub candidates of Ballon D’or. When you see the plays of Messi, when he touches the ball and he dribbles, you can see the difference.” said David Kim, eleventh-grader.

John Park, said “I think Ballon D’or is the award given to the best soccer player in the world. I agree that Lionel Messi is the best soccer player in the world, but I would argue that if the Ballon D’or is judged by merits or by the goals they scored last year, I would disagree that Messi deserves the Ballon D’or this year.

John continued to explain that Messi does not deserve the award this year “because there were players that did more” significant achievements in soccer. Messi sat out of the season for two months due to a knee injury. John said if Suarez and Neymar deserve the award because they “did  more than Messi this year”.

Agreeing with John, Jean Yi, an avid Ronaldo fan was quite upset that Messi received the award, to the extent that he was rolling on the floor at the mention of Messi’s name. All Jean could say is, “Messi doesn’t deserve the Ballon D’or because Cristiano Ronaldo is better”.