Will Messi win his fourth or is it Ronaldo for the treble?

Messi looking to reclaim Ballon d’Or from Ronaldo
Lionel Messi is the odds-on favourite to win the Ballon d’Or award Monday, after an impeccable 2015 which saw him win almost every trophy he competed for.
Messi won the prestigious award in 2010, 2011 and 2012, when he was the elegant icing on the cake of Pep Guardiola’s all-conquering Barcelona side.
However, Guardiola left Barca in 2012 and the club underwent serious internal problems, which contributed to Messi being edged out for the award by Cristiano Ronaldo in 2013 and 2014.
But 2015 saw Barca return to glory in spectacular style, winning the Champions League, La Liga, the Spanish Cup, the European Super Cup and the Club World Cup under Luis Enrique, with Messi scoring many of the crucial goals and setting up several others.
The only trophy to elude Barca was the Spanish Super Cup, in which they were surprisingly beaten by Athletic Bilbao.
Messi is the overwhelming favourite to win what would be his fourth Ballon d’Or, despite being out injured with a sprained left knee from September to November - and despite the stress of an ongoing lawsuit against him for tax evasion.
“It would be an absolute travesty if the award did not go to Messi,” Catalan radio station RAC1 commented.
“He has been far and away the most effective player in world football in 2015 - there can be no doubt whatsoever about that.”
Messi himself has tried to play down all the speculation about his return to top spot, saying recently in his habitual understated style: “It would be nice to win it (the Ballon d’Or) again, I can’t deny that.
“But the important thing is the trophies the team has won - and there have been many of them, fortunately.”
What has helped Messi to return to the top has been Barca signing Neymar, in 2013, then Luis Suarez a year later. Messi reportedly asked the club to sign both players, in order to remove the exclusive responsibility of scoring from him - and to allow him to drop back and play in a slightly more withdrawn role.
So the Messi the world saw in 2015 was a more mature one, playing “in the hole” behind the front two, and linking up devastatingly with them to form what is surely the most lethal forward line in contemporary world football.
“We have seen a new mature Messi this past year or so,” commented Catalan television channel TV3.
“At the age now of 28, he realizes he cannot reproduce the 40 or 50 metre sprints of a few years ago, so he has learned to play in a different way - in a calmer and more thoughtful way, pacing himself through the 90 minutes.
The only frustration for Messi in 2015 has been his continued frustrations with Argentina.
He helped his beloved ‘Albiceleste’ to reach the final in Chile - just as he guided them to the 2014 World Cup final - and scored in the penalty shootout against Chile, only to see his team lose 4-1 to the hosts.
Messi then received some harsh criticism in the Argentine media, leading national manager Gerardo Martino among others to say they would completely understand if he decided to take a well-deserved break from national team duty for a year or so - something Messi refused to even consider.

Ronaldo goes more in hope than expectation
Cristiano Ronaldo raised eyebrows across the world by undiplomatically whooping with delight when he won the Ballon d’Or in 2013 and 2014, ahead of arch-rival Lionel Messi.
The question on everyone’s lips now is: can Ronaldo win it for a third straight time - as Messi did from 2010 to 2012 - or will Messi reclaim top spot on the podium?
Messi is the odds-on favourite to win this time, having guided Barca to five major trophies in a flood of goals.
In contrast, Ronaldo has endured a difficult and trophyless year at Real Madrid, after the whites hit the hights in 2014.
However, former Germany goalkeeper Oliver Kahn has predicted another win for Ronaldo: “It’ll probably be another battle between Messi, who’s had a strong season, and Ronaldo, who has scored another hatful of goals.
“I think Ronaldo will win again, a man who calls himself the world’s best player - and who can blame him for that?”
Ronaldo’s alleged arrogance has not always endeared him to everyone in the football world.
In 2011, after being kicked from pillar to post by the defenders of Dynamo Zagreb - to the delight of the most of the crowd in the Croatian capital - Ronaldo infamously declared: “They hate me because I’m handsome, rich and a great player.”
And last week he paraded his massive ego once again by saying: “There are people who hate me, who say I’m vain, or arrogant, or this or that.  
“That’s part of my success. I was born to be the best. That’s the way I am, and if all my achievements in football are down to that, then I wouldn’t change a thing. I go to bed every night with a clear conscience and sleep perfectly well.
“You can’t live obsessing about what other people think about you, if you did, you wouldn’t live. Not even God can please everyone.”
Ronaldo is often jeered by a vocal minority of the ‘madridista’ fans in the Estadio Bernabeu - despite all his goals - especially when he declines to pass to a better-placed team-mate or balloons a free-kick well over the crossbar.
The only trophy that he won in 2015 was the Spanish league top scorers award, well ahead of Messi and Neymar - the third candidate on the Ballon d’Or shortlist this year.
Despite Real’s lack of success in 2015, Ronaldo made it clear that he wanted coach Carlo Ancelotti to stay on - and was furious when the Italian was pushed aside for Rafa Benitez.
Moreover, Ronaldo was, according to media reports, absolutely livid when Benitez - in his first week in the job - refused to accept that the Portuguese hitman was the best in the world, instead merely saying “he is clearly among the best players.”
After Real’s 4-0 meltdown against Barcelona in November, Ronaldo reportedly told Real president Florentino Perez that “we will never win anything with Benitez.”
Indeed, Ronaldo looked positively relieved earlier this week when Perez replaced Benitez with Zinedine Zidane. Benitez’s idea seemed to be to take Ronaldo off the left wing and use him as a second striker, on the assumption that Ronaldo - who will be 31 in February - was no longer up to making 30 or 40-metre surges down the flank.
It remains to be seen what particular role Zidane will assign to Ronaldo - or whether the Portuguese striker has more respect for the Frenchman than he had for Benitez.

Neymar simply delighted to be in the top three
When Neymar received the news that he was one of the three candidates to win the 2015 Ballon d’Or award, he did a euphoric samba dance of delight.
“It is wonderful to be included next to two such accomplished stars as Leo (Messi) and Ronaldo,” Neymar beamed.
“I will be in very special company at the ceremony...I take this as a recognition of how hard i have worked to improve my game in the last year or so.”
According to sources close to him, Neymar, 23, entertains very few hopes that he will be announced as the winner at Monday’s high-profile ceremony in Zurich.  
However, he is delighted just to be on the top three shortlist for the first time in his brief career.
His presence in the top three is entirely due to his exhilarating form for Barcelona instead of his patchy form for Brazil.
Neymar bowed out of the 2014 World Cup at the quarter-final stage with a back injury, then got himself sent off and suspended against Colombia in the group stage at the 2015 Copa America.
“It has not been a good year for me playing for Brazil,” he admitted recently. “But it has been a wonderful year at Barca, really wonderful.”
Neymar, playing as a false left-winger with freedom to roam, has linked up to devastating effect at Barca with fellow South Americans Messi and Luis Suarez, forming the much feared and admired ‘MSN’ strike trio.
“The three of us are great friends off the field and this also helps on the field. We are always looking to find each other and help each other, we try not to be selfish. We seem to have a very good understanding of each other’s movements and intentions.”
This understanding has been so effective that Barca won five out oof the six trophies they competed for in 2015: the Champions League, La Liga, the Spanish Cup, the European Super Cup and the Club World Cup.  
Neymar finished joint third in the Liga scoring chart last season with Antoine Griezmann of Atletico Madrid, behind Messi and Ronaldo.
In the Champions League, Neymar finished joint top with Messi and Ronaldo on 10 goals, thanks to hitting the final goal in Barca’s 3-1 defeat of Juventus in the final.
Neymar also scored in the final of the Spanish Cup, a 3-1 defeat of Athletic Bilbao, played in Barca’s own Camp Nou.
However, that was the night when Neymar infuriated the Bilbao defenders when - with the score at 3-1 - he tried to flick the ball over them with an audacious back-heel called a ‘Lambretta’ in Spain.
The Basque defenders thought Neymar was disrespecting them, and promptly hacked him down. Interestingly, Barca coach Luis Enrique - instead of backing up his player - said he understood the annoyance of the Basques and advised Neymar to give up on the party tricks.
Indeed, Neymar is not the most popular opponent among players and fans in Spain. He has frequently been accused of diving, and of trying to belittle defenders with his clever tricks.
“Football is entertainment, the crowd want to enjoy themselves,” he said recently.
“My first priority is to help my team win, but I also want to entertain the fans and let them see something different and unexpected.”