The Ballon d'Or is a glorified bauble, a marketing gimmick with as much relevance to football as hot air balloons to international travel.
But if it is going to be taken seriously, let's make sure the winner is the most influential player on the planet.
Yes, Lionel Messi won the Copa America with Argentina for the first time at the age of 34, and jolly well done to him for that.
Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have dominated Europe's football landscape for the greater part of this century, and their places in history were secure long ago.
But on what planet was Messi a more influential player in 2021 than Jorginho?
To win the Champions League with Chelsea and the deferred Euro 2020 with Italy, not to mention reaching an FA Cup final, and miss out on the Ballon d'Or because of almost slavish devotion to Messi is a travesty.
Jorginho was not just a serial winner when the big prizes came round in 2021 – he was an essential ingredient to success for club and country.
As every proper football fan knows, the best players aren't necessarily the strikers who score the most goals or the forwards who execute the most fancy step-overs in a single dribble.
Most teams have a 'water carrier' in midfield who run the hard yards, mop up and give the ball to more exotic team-mates to wreak havoc.
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If Jorginho is a water carrier, he serves sparkling Perrier in cut-glass tumblers with a slice of lemon on a silver tray.
Remarkably, he was once ridiculed at Chelsea as the teacher's pet who slowed the game down like needless temporary traffic lights on a wide road.
And when Maurizio Sarri turned a dream team into functional, pragmatic dullness, he was jeered by his own supporters as the root cause of a Hollywood cast churning out Cricklewood movies.
But whenever Italy hit bumps it the road at Euro 2020 – notably against Spain in the semi-finals and then gently suffocating England's early friskiness in the final - Jorginho navigated them safely through the ramps and potholes.
And if he was the architect of a ponderous style when Sarri seemed to be the hardest word at Stamford Bridge, Jorginho is a jewel in the crown of Roberto Mancini's Azzurri now.
Where he was once perceived as the bottleneck in blue heartlands, he is often the hub of the green now.
Earlier this year, he admitted: “I had some dark days at Chelsea, but I never doubted myself.”
After winning the Champions League, asphyxiating Manchester City's good intentions across every blade of grass in Porto, he conquered Europe again with his adopted country.
Jorginho is not the most celebrated, nor the flashiest, player in the Premier League, nor does he have as many followers as Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo on social media.
But neither of those gentlemen can say they won both the Euros (or the Copa America) and the Champions League in the space of six weeks.
Like a car's steering wheel, Jorginho has become an essential component. He should have won the Ballon d'Or, for whatever it's worth – but he won the European Cup and the Euros in 2021. Nobody else in the Premier League can say that.
