The Ballon d’Or award too often favors offensive players, high scorers, and World Cup winners.

FIFA, the ethically challenged arbiter of the world’s most popular sport, has proposed a short-list of three for the Ballon d’Or, the top individual accolade: Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, and Manuel Neuer. Like most sports awards, fans are rooting for their favorites—but unlike many others, it’s hard to make a statistical case that one player is more valuable than another. That often makes the award merely a measure of prolific goal-scoring—but as any manager will tell you, that’s probably not enough to carry a successful soccer team. How can we improve?