Lionel Messi

The FIFA Ballon d’Or is the biggest award a soccer player can win based on an individual performance. Every year, the best players and coaches around the world gather together to find out who is the best player, the best female player, best coach and the FIFpro World XI — the best starting line-up in the world.

A few months ago, FIFA released a 50-players list of nominees for the award so, how do we get from there to the final three nominees that traveled to the Gala in Zurich?

For better or worse, Tiger Woods is the most famous golfer of all time. It is no exaggeration to say that he changed the entire sport. Watching Tiger in his Sunday-red was must-see TV for networks and people across the country alike. He paved the way for the game’s young talent to make the breakthrough into stardom. But he hasn’t won over his own kids! It turns out Tiger Woods' kids want to be like a different superstar athlete.

If you played sports while growing up, there is a good chance that you had that one friend (hopefully that was you), who was miles ahead of the other kids in terms of skill.

That kid who would nutmeg everybody while playing around with the soccer ball, cross people over and leave them on the floor on the basketball court, or even juke you out of your shoes in a pickup football game. We all went through something like that at some point of our sporting careers.

Lionel Messi apparently gets under his rivals' skin. I suppose being ridiculously good will do that. 

Yesterday in the Copa del Rey against Espanyol, Messi scored an absolutely absurd free kick. Espanyol keeper Pau Lopez set up his wall perfectly, positioned himself perfectly, and reacted to it perfectly, but was still left grasping for air as the kick sailed through the air, off the crossbar, and down in the the goal. 

It is incredible to think that, with athletes across sports getting bigger, faster and stronger each and every the year, the two players most dominating their respective sports are not "big guys" at all. The two players are, of course, Messi and Curry (a.k.a. Lionel Messi and Steph Curry).

Dutch journalist Michel Abbink has apparently got ahold of the results for the 2015 Ballon d'Or award, given to the best player in the world, and the reported winner will surprise approximately nobody: Lionel Messi.

This would be Messi's fourth Ballon d'Or win in the six years the award in its current form has been given out. Neymar and Cristiano Ronaldo are also finalists.

Abbink tweeted a photo that shows Messi as the male Ballon d'Or winner, and German Celia Sasic as the female winner.

Since we were kids, we've looked around for inspiring figures, people that we can imitate and learn from. And very often we tend to find them on a pitch or a court. The world of sports — and soccer in particular, due to its huge reach — is full of inspirational people for the fans.

But have you ever wondered who the biggest players admire? No matter how perfect we see them or how many qualities we project on them, they are as human as you and me, and they also grew watching other inspirational figures that pushed, motivated and taught them.

It is a near-universal truth that soccer fans want to be Messi, to live Messi's life and do what Messi does. This holds true, apparently, for other footballers as well. Just ask Real Madrid defender Sergio Ramos.

Ramos tweeted out his New Year's collage earlier today, which is a thing a lot of people do. What most people don't do, however, is include in their collages pictures of other people's significant others and children.

Lionel Messi made his 500th appearance for FC Barcelona on Wednesday and, naturally, was on the scoresheet. Messi was named in the starting XI, as well as captain for the night, despite having just passed a kidney stone and traveling between Japan, Argentina, Dubai and Barcelona over the past 10 days. 

No matter. Messi put in another Man of the Match performance during Barca's 4-0 La Liga victory over Real Betis.