The 2017/18 season has been an unpredictable affair with record after record broken, the rise of some new stars and of course the drama that was this year's Champions League, meaning that our expectations for this season were thoroughly exceeded. So much so that there doesn't seem to be a clear out and out favourite for who will be crowned this year's best footballer as the winner of the Balon D'Or.
The usual suspects Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, along with this season's breakout star Mohamed Salah have been the players that have set themselves apart from the rest, and each you'd have to say may have as much claim to the Balon D'Or as much as the next man.
Cristiano Ronaldo recovered from a slow start to the season to eventually finish with 50 goals for club and country to keep pace with his statistic of scoring 50 goals or more for the past eight seasons.
The Portugal star went on to score 44 goals for Real Madrid this season which included the 15 goals he scored on the road to Madrid's third consecutive Champions League title.
Ronaldo played a huge part in their European campaign scoring in 10 successive matches to top the scoring charts in this season's Champions League.
However, on the domestic scene Ronaldo scored the fewest number of goals out of the three players who will be vying for the Balon D'Or. Ronaldo scored 26 goals for Real as Los Blancos finsihed in third behind rivals Atletico Madrid and Barcelona.
As much as he's contributed to Real Madrid's record breaking season its a keenly observable fact that his approach to the game has changed as he's transitioned into more of goal poacher. This loosely translates into Ronaldo only affecting the game only through his goals.
His goals may win matches most of the time, but you'd have to ask how much of an effect he has on games outside of his goal scoring exploits.
The meteoric rise of Mohamed Salah has been pretty much a reflection of this season. Mixing the unpredictable with the sublime the Egyptian tore through the Premier League in a manner which has not been seen in a while. Along the way Salah set a number of records the most monumental of which being scoring 32 goals in the league the most in a 38 game Premier League season.
Breaking the record once held by Premier League legends like Alan Shearer and Cristiano Ronaldo speaks volumes of the type of performances the Egyptian has had during the season.
He played a huge part in Liverpool's run into the Champions League finals scoring 10 times.
In addition to that Salah's game is in more than just scoring goals. On top of scoring goals for fun, Salah also set up his teammates on 14 occasions (10 in the league and 4 Champions Legaue) bringing his overall involvement in Liverpool's goal tally to 58.
His claim for the world's best player will also be boosted by the host of individual awards he's collected throughout the season after winning the PFA Player of the year, Premier League player of the season, CAF Footballer of the year and the Football Writer's Association player of the Year.
As you can see as far as individual awards are concerned the Egyptian has got them in spades, but as sublime as he was during the season, his Liverpool side only placed fourth in the league and finished the season without a trophy to show for his efforts.
And that could be the one criteria which may mean the Balon D'or goes elsewhere. As we all know, despite it being for a individual player it usually goes to players who helps his team win trophies i.e. the Champions League.
Lionel Messi is without a doubt the best player of his generation and backed his claim for this year's best player award with some sterling performances. The Argentine scored 45 goals in all competitions for FC Barcelona guiding them to a league and cup double as the Spanish giants came narrowly within finishing the season undefeated.
He also not only topped the La Liga scoring charts with 34 goals, but also along with teammate Luis Suarez and Villarreal's Pablo Fornals created the most number of goals with 12 assists each.
As a result of playing a more deeper role, Messi looks to have more of a influence on games as he's created more goal scoring chances (87) than any other player in Spain.
In addition to this he scored the most number of goals from outside the box which included six freekicks which matches Ronaldinhos record set in the 2006/07 season.
From this you can glean that the task to select who will win the Balon D'Or will be the most difficult we've seen in recent times and the vote could very likely go down to the wire, which could effectively leave it up to the performances in this year's world cup to decide who is the world's best.
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