Ballon d'Or 2015 Nominees, Predictions & Stats: Why Real Madrid's Karim Benzema Can Win It All

By David Salazar Oct 30 2014, 12:55 PM EDT

For the third time in his career, Frenchman Karim Benzema has found himself on the list of the best 23 players in the world as the race to the 2015 Ballon d'Or trophy is on.

Benzema has yet to finish in the top three in voting; his best finish was 20th in voting back in 2011, when he accrued 0.34 percent of the vote.

For Benzema, this year has been filled with numerous ups and downs. Here is a look at Benzema's year and how his candidacy for the coveted trophy holds up:

High Points

For Benzema, the high points are always fleeting. He has been consistently booed throughout his career by both club and country. Madrid fans in general tend to hold him up as a perennial scapegoat for not scoring. With France, he has been subject to similar treatment.

But he has been consistently defended by his teammates and especially by coach Carlo Ancelotti.

"Karim isn't under pressure to score goals, his job is to work to help the team play better and give us solutions in attack," Ancelotti said back in September when defending Benzema during a scoring drought.

When he is on his game, he is arguably one of the best strikers out there. He not only scores, but he is also great at setting up others for goals. Cristiano Ronaldo owes him more than a few goals this season.

But what has been the high point of Benzema's year?

One would have to look at two moments in particular. The first would be the World Cup when the Frenchman was his nation's main attacking source and did not fail in his mandate. Benzema finished the tournament with three goals.

And his other great highlight of the year came recently when he was Madrid's most instrumental player in back-to-back wins over Liverpool and Barcelona.

He scored two goals against Liverpool, including a terrific header for the second tally. And then he added a crucial goal against Barcelona to put the game out of reach.

Low Point

There was a stretch early in the 2014-15 season when Benzema was struggling to find the net consistently and was hearing it from the fans. It seemed that he, alongside Iker Casillas, was the Madrid punching bag that was jeered and ridiculed at any possible moment.

And it all came crashing down in a 2-1 loss against Atletico Madrid in which he fumbled a glorious opportunity to put his team ahead.

Why He Can Win It

It's a tough ask as Benzema's teammate Cristiano Ronaldo has it all but locked up.

However, voting is ongoing and Benzema is starting to heat up. If he continues his play and increases the volume of scoring, then there is a chance that he might win people over. The odds are not in his favor, but anything is possible.

Why He Will Not Win

He was not a World Cup winner. He did win a few trophies with Real Madrid and was a major catalyst in all of them, but he did not score any game-winning goals in either of the two finals won by Real Madrid this season. There is one player on the list that won them both. He has been outscored by a few players on this list and few will forget that he had a lengthy stretch between the end of the 2013-14 season and start of the current season in which he struggled to put the ball in the back of the net.

Most importantly, he has never gotten very far in voting, so expecting him to suddenly turn heads, when others are a) more popular and b) scoring more than he is, is highly unlikely.