Nigeria, Sept. 9 -- It's that time of the year again.

The Ballon d'Or nominations drop, and football immediately loses its mind. Who is missing? Who has no business being there? Who should win? And somehow, 70 years later, we are still having the same argument over a golden ball. But here's something a lot of people don't know: The Ballon d'Or was never created by FIFA. It wasn't created by UEFA either. It also doesn't belong to the French Football Federation. It started as a magazine idea. In 1956, France Football decided it wanted to answer a simple question: who was the best footballer in Europe? Journalists Gabriel Hanot and Jacques Ferran were among the key figures behind the idea. Journalists from 16 countries were asked to vote, ...