A few days ago, the 23-man shortlist was revealed for the 2014 Ballon D’Or — the accolade given to the “best player in the world”.

One newspaper headline screamed “Cristiano — and 22 others” in a nod to it being a foregone conclusion that Real Madrid’s talisman Ronaldo will walk away with the title for the second year in a row.

One or two other outlets followed suit and, indeed, on the face of it, it would be hard to argue against Ronaldo making it two in two. A Champions League triumph in May and an astonishing goals-to-games ratio are two good reasons why the Portuguese already has one hand on the glittering prize.

But are they the right reasons?

Frankly, Fifa’s supposed showpiece individual award has become something of a laughing stock. The criteria for winning the title has been left so open-ended that almost any of the game’s greatest exponents could lay claim to a triumph.

Let’s start with Lionel Messi, a player who until last season exclusively owned the title for a number of years.

Despite the incredible rate of knots at which Ronaldo is banging the goals in, he is still only six ahead of the Argentine in the calendar year and Messi has nine more assists to his name than his contemporary, so is evidently more involved on a team level than Ronaldo.

Should all-round excellence therefore play a part in the decision-making process?

Lest we forget too that Messi almost single-handedly dragged Argentina to the World Cup final, only to fall at the final hurdle to the Germans.

Ah yes, the Germans. What about the genuine claims from one of that country’s finest?

Philipp Lahm has enjoyed an incredible 2014, yet already appears to have slipped under the radar when we come to talk about contenders.

A magnificent World Cup triumph in Brazil, the first by a European nation in South America, was the cherry on the cake.

Lahm had already taken Bayern Munich to Bundesliga success in record time, and a win against eternal rivals Borussia Dortmund in the German Cup final gave the Bavarians the 10th league and cup double in its history.

Furthermore, to April 2014, Bayern had set a new record of matches unbeaten in the Bundesliga. Incredibly, Augsburg were the first side in 54 matches to take three points from Pep Guardiola’s all-conquering machine.

Surely, as captain of both club and country, Lahm’s achievements need further recognition?

Perhaps he’s just not “box office” enough for Fifa. His club colleague Franck Ribery found he wasn’t the flavour of the month during the last awards ceremony when, again, there were good enough reasons to consider the Frenchman as a contender for the main prize.

The re-opening of last year’s vote left Fifa with even more egg on their faces than usual, with suggestions that the vote was rigged once Ronaldo had single-handedly sent Portugal through to the World Cup.

Hardly fair on the player, but completely in keeping with the banal nature of this award, PR gaffes and all.

Without detailed, specific and clear criteria set out for everyone to fully understand, the awarding of the “Golden Ball” is open to interpretation and manipulation, which is incredibly amateurish from Sepp Blatter and his cronies at the sport’s governing body. No change there, you might say.

You might just as well grab yourself a blindfold and put a new twist on pin the tail on the donkey. It’s as good a way as any to get our winner!

Perhaps we should rename the award. Ballon B’Ore anyone?

— The writer is a freelance journalist and Spanish football expert