The Ballon d'Or is an annual football award presented by French magazine France Football since 1956 to honour the player deemed to have performed the best over the previous season.
Franklin Edmundo Rijkaard is a Dutch former footballer and former manager who played as a defensive midfielder. Regarded as one of the best midfielders in footballing history, Rijkaard was described by British broadsheet The Daily Telegraph as having been "a stylish player of faultless pedigree".
Lionel Andrés Messi, also known as Leo Messi, is an Argentine professional footballer who plays as a forward for and captains both Major League Soccer club Inter Miami and the Argentina national team. Widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time, Messi set numerous records for individual accolades won throughout his professional footballing career such as eight Ballon d'Or awards and eight times being named the world's best player by FIFA. He is the most decorated player in the history of professional football having won 45 team trophies, including twelve league titles, four UEFA Champions Leagues, two Copa Américas, and one FIFA World Cup. Messi holds the records for most European Golden Shoes (6), most goals for a single club, most goals (474), hat-tricks (36) and assists (192) in La Liga, most matches played (39), assists (18) and goal contributions (34) in the Copa América, most matches played (26) and goal contributions (21) in the World Cup, most international appearances (189) and international goals (112) by a South American male, and the second-most in the latter category outright. A prolific goalscorer and creative playmaker, Messi has scored over 850 senior career goals for club and country.
Football Weekly is a podcast about football produced by The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom. It was first broadcast in 2006. It reviews the latest football results and news, and previews forthcoming matches. While focused on the Premier League and English football more broadly, the show pays significant attention to football across Europe, paying particular attention to La Liga, Serie A and the Bundesliga.
Sean Ingle is a British sports journalist. He is currently the chief sports reporter and columnist for The Guardian and The Observer. He was previously the newspaper's athletics correspondent and online sports editor.
"Anti-football" is a playing style in association football that emphasizes a highly defensive and aggressive approach, relying mainly on passing and involving the deployment of all team members except the striker behind the ball. The goal of the tactic is to prevent the opposing team from scoring, rather than pursuing an offensive strategy to win the game.
Max Paul Rushden is an English radio and television presenter and the current host of The Guardian's Football Weekly podcast.
Barry Glendenning is an Irish sports journalist who holds the position of deputy sports editor on the guardian.co.uk website run by UK newspaper The Guardian.
Sarah Bouhaddi is a French professional footballer who plays as a goalkeeper for Al Ula in Saudi Women's Premier League.
FourFourTwo is a football magazine published by Future. Issued monthly, it published its 300th edition in May 2019. It takes its name from the football formation of the same name, 4-4-2. Future acquired the magazine from Haymarket Media Group in 2018. Haymarket previously acquired Future's earlier football magazine Total Football in 2001 and absorbed it into FourFourTwo.
The first match between Manchester United and Manchester City in the 2009–10 Premier League football season was played on 20 September 2009 at Old Trafford, Trafford. It was the 153rd Manchester derby between the two clubs. Heading into the game, both teams were level on points having both won four matches in the opening weeks of the season, and big-spending City were seen as a new threat to United, who had been the dominant force in English football for over 15 years.
The Messi–Ronaldo rivalry, or Ronaldo–Messi rivalry, is a sporting rivalry in football propelled by the media and fans that involves Argentine footballer Lionel Messi and Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, mainly for being contemporaries and due to their similar records and sporting successes. They spent nine seasons in the prime of their careers facing off regularly while playing for rival clubs Barcelona and Real Madrid.
The Memorial Aldo Rovira Award is a trophy awarded by FC Barcelona to its best players of the season and it is decided by a jury composed of board of directors and heads of sport in Catalan media. The award was created in 2010 in memory of the son of former FC Barcelona director, Josep Lluis Rovira, who died in a car/traffic accident one year earlier.
The 100 Best Female Footballers in the World is an annual global ranking of the best female footballers. The list was started by The Offside Rule podcast in 2016. Since 2018 it has also been published in association with the British newspaper The Guardian who have published the male equivalent since its inception in 2012.
The Guardian Footballer of the Year is an annual award by the British newspaper The Guardian. Since 2016, it is awarded to a footballer regardless of gender "who has done something truly remarkable, whether by overcoming adversity, helping others or setting a sporting example by acting with exceptional honesty."
The La Liga is a Spanish professional league for association football club. At the top of the Spanish football league system, it is the country's primary football competition and is contested by 20 clubs. The competition was formed in 1929, with an initial format of 10 teams.
Livano Comenencia is a professional footballer who plays as a right-back for Italian club Juventus Next Gen. Born in the Netherlands, he plays for the Curaçao national team.
Lionel Messi 
Barcelona 
Cristiano Ronaldo 
Luka Modrić 
Robert Lewandowski 
Bayern Munich 
Paris Saint-Germain 
Erling Haaland 
Manchester City