Sergio Aguero Can Win the Ballon D’Or Under Pep Guardiola at Manchester City

There was a time when neither Lionel Messi nor Cristiano Ronaldo owned the Ballon d’Or. 

It was nearly a decade ago in 2007 when George W.Bush was still in the White House, and Twitter and the iPhone were both only a year old.

The winner that year was Kaka, the Brazilian playmaker, who is now better known as a pub quiz answer as the last Ballon d’Or winner before the Messi-Ronaldo era. 

But this unprecedented dominance from Messi and Ronaldo, which has seen the pair triumph in the annual poll for eight consecutive years, could soon be coming to an end.

It is unlikely to be this year for Ronaldo’s success in winning both the Champions League and European Championship makes it very difficult to see a winner other than the Real Madrid man, who should collect his fourth Ballon d’Or in January next year.

But in 2017, Messi and Ronaldo’s duopoly of the award could finally be broken, and one of the leading contenders to do this has to be Manchester City’s Sergio Aguero.

The Argentinian striker has long been a very fine player, a natural and prolific goalscorer, who has twice helped deliver the Premier League title to the Etihad Stadium, in 2012 with that dramatic and late winning goal against QPR, and once again in 2014.

Over the course of the last five years since his arrival from Atletico Madrid, his goals, 147 at the last count, have helped transform City in to a major force at home and abroad.

But there should be much more to come from Aguero, who turned 28 this summer, now that he has Pep Guardiola guiding his career.

It was Guardiola who nurtured Messi, and for the four years the pair worked together at Barcelona between 2008 and 2012, the Argentinian was presented with the Ballon d’Or every year.

Now Guardiola could perform the same service to Aguero.

In recent years, sheer weight of goals has helped both Messi and Ronaldo win the Ballon d’Or and deny the more …

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