With the season officially over, I decided to take stock of the award that theoretically goes to the best soccer player in the world:

[S]ome combination of Spain (Euro 2024 winner), Argentina (Copa America 2024 winner) and maybe Colombia (Copa America 2024 runner-up) and England (Euro 2024 runner-up) will have more players receiving votes than they otherwise would've in a season without a summer of major international tournaments. And if there were a standout performer for either Spain or Argentina who also plays for Real Madrid, then he might be the favorite for this award.

No Argentines play for Real Madrid, while the only members of Spain's Euro-winning side from Madrid were Joselu, Nacho Fernandez and Dani Carvajal. Joselu rarely played for either side, and although Nacho was in and out of the lineups for both club and country, he'll probably nab a couple of down-ballot votes.

This is going to sound absurd, but there's an outside shot that Dani Carvajal wins the Ballon d'Or. He scored Real Madrid's winning goal against Dortmund and went the full 90 against England in the final of the Euros. If Jorginho could finish third in a year where there were two superstar candidates in Messi and Lewandowski, the 32-year-old Madrid full-back could sneak into the top slot in a season with no obvious choice at the top of the ballot.

Also, a bonus book rec: Godwin, by Joseph O’Neill. I pretty much only read pre-1990’s spy novels at this point, but yes, you can interest me in a novel about neocolonialism, the vagaries of talent identification, socialist worker collectives, and the world-historical sweep of my favorite sport.