Let’s take a look at the data for all previous Ballon d’or nominees and winners (before 2018).

History of Nominees

First, let’s look at how many different players have been nominated to this award since its creation in 1956.

nominees <- read.csv("BallonDOr.csv")
attach(nominees)
length(unique(nominees$Player))
## [1] 740

We can see that a total of 740 different players have ever been nominated to the Ballon D’Or.

Top Nation

Let’s see what is the nation with the most nominations.

names(which.max(table(Nationality)))
## [1] "Italy"
top_nation <- subset(nominees, Nationality == "Italy")
nrow(top_nation)
## [1] 173

Using the which.max function on a table created from the Nationality vector, we can see that the country with the most nominations is Italy. We then create a subset to see the 173 nominations for Italian players in this award.

Top Club

Let’s use the same logic to find out what is the club with the most Ballon D’Or nominations.

names(which.max(table(Club)))
## [1] "Real Madrid CF"
top_club <- subset(nominees, Club == "Real Madrid CF")
nrow(top_club)
## [1] 149

We can see that Real Madrid CF is the club with the most nominations at 149.

History of Winners

From all nominations, let’s create a subset to see just the winners. How many different players have actually won the Ballon D’Or?

winners <- subset(nominees, nominees$Rank == 1)
length(unique(winners$Player))
## [1] 44

We can see that just 44 different players have won the Ballon D’Or.

Most Awards

Which player has won this award the most? Let’s take a look.

names(which.max(table(winners$Player)))
## [1] "Cristiano Ronaldo"
top_player <- subset(winners, winners$Player == "Cristiano Ronaldo")
top_player
##      Year Rank            Player              Club Nationality Points P1 P2 P3
## 1499 2008    1 Cristiano Ronaldo Manchester United    Portugal    446 77 11  4
## 1622 2013    1 Cristiano Ronaldo    Real Madrid CF    Portugal     NA NA NA NA
## 1645 2014    1 Cristiano Ronaldo    Real Madrid CF    Portugal     NA NA NA NA
## 1691 2016    1 Cristiano Ronaldo    Real Madrid CF    Portugal    745 NA NA NA
## 1721 2017    1 Cristiano Ronaldo    Real Madrid CF    Portugal    946 NA NA NA
##      P4 P5 Votes RankPts  Share Percent Voted
## 1499  1  3    96      50 0.3097  0.9292     1
## 1622 NA NA     0      50 0.2799  0.5038     0
## 1645 NA NA     0      50 0.3766  0.6779     0
## 1691 NA NA     0      50 0.4785  0.8613     0
## 1721 NA NA     0      50 0.3359  0.6045     0

We can see tha t at the time this data was collected, Cristiano Ronaldo was the player with the most Ballon D’Or awards (tied with Lionel Messi).

Highest percentage of votes

Which player won the award with the highest percentage of votes?

max(winners$Percent)
## [1] 0.9854
most_voted <- subset(winners, winners$Percent == 0.9854)

We can see that the winner with the highest amount of voters was Lionel Messi in 2009, when more than 98% of people voted for him.